Exam 2

Engage attendees

"Correspond personally in advance with each participant directly to confirm their participation in the meeting and engage their vested interest," advises Steffey. You may want to assign regular or rotating meeting roles (such as facilitator) to further involve participants. Ensuring that everyone is responsible for an agenda item and limiting participation (no more than ten attendees per meeting) can also boost virtual engagement. "Research shows that the highest performing virtual teams are ones where everyone shares responsibility for keeping the group on track," DeRosa says.

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Wolfram|Alpha

"What we're trying to do is take all the things that can be computed about the world ...and try and package it to the point where we can just walk up to a Web site and have it deliver the knowledge we'd like to have. Like interacting with an expert, it will understand what you are talking about, do the computation and present to you results." When given a mathematical expression, Wolfram|Alpha plots a graph on x and y axes and performs additional computations, including showing the steps for calculating the mathematical derivative. When given a travel query about the distance from Tokyo to Boston, Wolfram|Alpha assumes that Boston is located in the United States but provides New York as a nearby alternative. It calculates the distance if travelling by air, sound, or light and includes the travel path between both locations on a world map. When the "price of gasoline" is entered as a search term, Wolfram|Alpha returns the current price per gallon of gasoline in the United States, along with a chart showing historical prices, and statistics about high and low gas prices during the past 16 years.

Share an agenda

"While having an agenda is always important, it is doubly important in a virtual meeting," says Dick Axelrod, who with his wife Emily Axelrod co-founded leadership and organizational consultancy The Axelrod Group and co-wrote "Let's Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done." "Virtual meetings require a clear road map which shows tells participants where they are going and how they will get there," he says. To make it as productive as possible, outline what will happen before, during and after the meeting, adds DeRosa. Use the agenda to determine who needs to attend and send a copy to all participants, noting the purpose and expected outcome for each agenda item. "Allotting a certain amount of time for each agenda item gives attendees the option of joining the meeting just for their portion of the discussion, rather than having to sit through the entire gathering," says DeRosa.

Add the email address last

"You don't want to send an email accidentally before you have finished writing and proofing the message," Pachter says. "Even when you are replying to a message, it's a good precaution to delete the recipient's address and insert it only when you are sure the message is ready to be sent."

Salemi says while in theory the

"right-to-disconnect" bill is a step in the right direction, ultimately it's an employer's responsibility to set the example. "It needs to stem from the top. If you're a boss, you need to log off and set an example and find ways to be productive and not feel like your success is dependent on being available 24/7."

features of cloud computing

- data storage in the cloud - software applications in the cloud - development tolls in the cloud - high end servers in the cloud - scalability - play as you go - location independent

Virtual Meetings: Nine Key Strategies For A Stronger Remote Presentation

1) Repeat 2) Use bullet points and verbal highlighting 3) Plant a participant 4) Spread the responsibility 5) Share the screen 6) Take a poll 7) Give your audience time 8) Be a tough cop 9) End on time

4 Tips to Better Manage Your Email Inbox

1) Set aside time to read and respond to email 2) Take action immediately 3) Organize an inbox with labels, folders and categories 4) Unsubscribe from unwanted promotional emails

virtual server

One of several Web servers hosted on a high-end server.

9 ways to fix awful virtual meetings

1) Skip the status updates 2) Share an agenda 3) Match the tools to the tasks 4) Test the technology 5) Make meetings short and sweet 6) Build in relationship-building 7) Be an active facilitator 8) Engage attendees 9) Attend to the end

Five E-Mail Management Strategies for Work-Life Balance During the Holidays

1) Turn off email notifications 2) Don't initiate emails or phone calls 3) Use email auto responders 4) Overcome FOMO 5) Plan time in your schedule to "catch up"

Before the meeting: (How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting)

1) Turn the video on 2) Cut out report-outs 3) Come prepared with the team's opinions

15 Email Etiquette Rules Every Professional Should Follow

1) Include a clear, direct subject line 2) Use a professional email address 3) Think twice before hitting 'reply all' 4) Include a signature block 5) Use professional salutations 6) Use exclamation points sparingly 7) Be cautious with humor 8) Know that people from different cultures speak and write differently 9) Reply to your emails even if the email wasn't intended for you 10) Proofread every message 11) Add the email address last 12) Double-check that you've selected the correct recipient 13) Keep your fonts classic 14) Keep tabs on your tone 15) Nothing is confidential, so write accordingly

Major differences between video conferencing and teleconferencing

1) Audio or Visual 2) Participation 3) Number of Participants 4) Convenience 5) Effectiveness and support

During the meeting: (How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting)

1) Connect people 2) Encourage collaborative problem solving 3) Give each person time on the agenda 4) Kill mute 5) Ban multitasking 6) Assign a Yoda

5 Ways to Use the Cloud in Your Small Business

1) Data Backup 2) Mobile Working 3) Information Sharing 4) File Storage 5) Growth Planning

The Home Disadvantage: The Challenges of Telecommuting

1) Distractions 2) Work-Life Balance 3) Isolation

After the meeting: (How to Run a Great Virtual Meeting)

1) Formalize the water cooler

How to Telecommute Successfully

1) Have a dedicated workspace 2) Have a start and stop time 3) Consider your outfit 4) Tell friends and family 5) Communicate with your manager

Benefits Of Telecommuting For The Future Of Work

1) Improving productivity 2) Better for your health and the environment 3) Keeping older generations in the workforce 4) Decreasing costs 5) Reducing employee turnover

3 ways to make sure the ban on multitasking is followed

1) Use video: It can essentially eliminate multitasking, because your colleagues can see you. 2) Have the meeting leader call on people to share their thoughts. Since no one likes to be caught off-guard, they'll be more apt to pay attention. 3) Give people different tasks in the meeting, rotated regularly. To keep people engaged, have a different team member keep the minutes of the meeting; track action items, owners and deadlines; and even come up with a fun question to ask everyone at the conclusion of the meeting. Nick Morgan, president of consulting company Public Words Inc., recommends constant touchpoints: "In a virtual meeting, you need to stop regularly to take everyone's temperature. And I do mean everyone. Go right around the list, asking each locale or person for input."

Best cloud storage of 2020 online: free, paid and business options

1) iDrive 2) pCloud 3) Zoolz 4) Degoo 5) Mega cloud storage 6) OneDrive 7) iCloud 8) Google Drive 9) Box 10) NextCloud

Differentiate between "immediate" and "timely" communication.

Define what constitutes an "immediate" response to electronic communication and what constitutes a "timely" response. Depending on your organization, an immediate response could mean five minutes or 60 minutes, while a timely response could translate into one hour or three hours.

SpiderOak

A 'zero knowledge' cloud storage provider. Tight security, plenty of native clients, limited free offering. It is part of a new trend of zero knowledge cloud storage providers. The website claims that after installing the client your data is encrypted before syncing. Unfortunately since SpiderOak hasn't made the client source code public, there's no way to confirm this. The SpiderOakOne client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as Android and iOS (although, both Android and iOS are read-only apps, meaning you can only view files, and can't upload or sync anything). You can also log in via the web interface but privacy lovers may prefer not to as it exposes your password to SpiderOak employees.

google sets

A Google technology for finding lists of related values.

virtual computer

A Web application that provides computing capabilities.

Encourage collaborative problem solving

A collaborative problem solving session replaces the standard "report-outs" that can weigh meetings down. It's when the leader raises a topic for group discussion and the team works together - and sees each other as sources of advice - to unearth information and viewpoints, and to generate fresh ideas in response to business challenges.

server farm

A collection of servers stored in a data center facility.

Don't replace all electronic messages with face-to-face communication.

A face-to-face request is 34 times more effective than an e-mail, researchers found in 2017. Yet that doesn't mean face-to-face communication should always substitute for e-mail or any other electronic communication. RescueTime's MacKay said face-to-face communication is the most common, most disruptive workplace distraction. Therefore, an e-mail or instant message might do the trick in place of an in-person visit. However, face-to-face communication might be the best option in certain scenarios, such as when you're trying to build rapport with a new hire. "The key, it seems to me, is more in how you communicate rather than the tool," MacKay said. "Have the conversation about what's expected of people, and the tool shouldn't matter."

Plant a participant

A great way to make sure everyone is paying attention is to encourage participation: comments, questions, conversation. But especially when engaging remotely, people tend to hesitate to break the ice. Try designating a team member ahead of time to comment or ask a question to get things rolling -- don't spring this on them. You never want to embarrass someone by calling them out when they are unprepared.

Semantic Web

A name for Web 3.0, where intelligent software tools discern meaning from Web content.

Magnetic Core 1951 (2KB)

A new standard. The first core memory used in a computer stored a little more than 2KB, roughly the size of a small PNG image file or 2,000 characters of text. Invented in 1951, magnetic core memory was first used in the MIT Whirlwind computer. Core memory works by storing one bit of data on tiny magnetic rings, or cores. The more magnetic cores you pack into a core memory, the more data you can store on it. Core memory was the standard in computing from 1955 to 1975. As recently as 2004, a magnetic core memory system was found still in service in a telephony control system. It continues to capture the interest of modern enthusiasts today.

Degoo

A newcomer that packs a lot of punch. Good mobile apps, very affordable, 2fa only available via google, desktop utility needs improving. Swedish outfit Degoo is not a household name, and therefore it comes as a surprise that it has managed to carve itself a niche inside the ultra-competitive cloud storage market. With only two offerings, this outfit has managed to attract more than 15 million users globally since its inception earlier in 2019 - an estimated 20,000 people join Degoo every day. It is one of the few cloud storage companies worldwide that encrypts stored files and disperses them across four different continents. It also supports two-factor authentication via the Google sign-in.

Google Drive

A smart option for Google fans and G Suite users. Generous amounts of free storage, integrated with android devices, web interface isn't the best. It is a natural choice for owners of Android devices as it's already integrated, but users of other platforms may appreciate the generous free storage too. You can also store high definition photos on your mobile phone with companion app Google Photos, and make use of Google's own office suite (now known as G Suite). Also, upgrading to paid Google Drive plans is now called Google One (although it might not yet be available, depending on the region). Downsides include the fact that the web interface isn't very easy-to-use, although Windows and Mac users can download a desktop app to drag-and-drop files easily.

web services

A software modules that allow sharing of information between Web applications.

Remote workers save more money compared to office workers

A study done by Global Workplace Analytics found that remote workers can save from $2,000 to $7,000 every year. Saving money is definitely one of the biggest motivators to work remotely. Remote workers save on: a) Commuting: Remote workers do not incur the expenses of traveling to and from work, that can be a significant in some locations, depending on the distance and means of transportation -from car fuel and maintenance costs to public transport fare-. The average office worker in America takes about 26 minutes to go to work, time which remote based professionals can use how they want. b) Clothing: Remote workers can work in whatever clothing they choose to without a problem. However, office workers have to wear according to their company's dress code, which can be formal attire in many cases. Even though some offices are shifting towards more casual wear, the costs incurred by the average remote worker are way less. "Cities are getting crowded and living there is getting more expensive. Daycare for children is getting more expensive. Transport is taking longer and is getting more expensive. It's getting harder and harder to justify having people travel to expensive offices for hours on end." c) Food: Group lunches, expensive meals at restaurants, and snacks at the vending machine are not a usual concern of the remote worker who can usually eat at home or have much more flexibility to choose where to eat at. d) Child care: Parents can reduce the time their child stays under childcare with the usual more flexible schedule that remote based positions tend to offer.

=1 billion Blu-rays

About 90% of that has been created in the last few years. We generate approximately 2,500,000,000,000,000 KB(2.5 quintillion bytes) of new data every day. That number is only going up, which means we'll need a lot more data storage in the future.

Give each person time on the agenda

Along with collaborative problem solving, giving each person time on the agenda fosters greater collaboration and helps get input from all the team members. Here's how it works: In advance of the session, have team members write up an issue they've been struggling with and bring it to the table, one at a time. Each team member then gets five minutes on the agenda to discuss his or her issue. The group then goes around the meeting so everyone gets a chance to either ask a question about it or pass. After the team member answers everyone's questions, people then get an opportunity to offer advice in the "I might suggest" format, or pass. Then, you move on to the next issue. It's a very effective use of a collaboration technique that could easily be managed in a virtual environment.

Organize an inbox with labels, folders and categories

Although a majority of emails can be deleted, you'll most likely want to retain messages related to key aspects of your business. Correspondence between clients, colleagues and employees can help clarify any miscommunications. Most email programs let users mark messages with specific labels or categories. Prioritize, group, sort and file messages to keep your inbox organized. The better your filing system, the easier it will be to locate specific emails when you need them. Create parent categories for broad subjects such as the following: clients, projects and finances. Then use subcategories to file emails related to specific clients or projects. Before you file a message, ensure the subject line is search-friendly. If it doesn't accurately describe the content of the email, edit the subject line before it's categorized and archived.

Most of the remote work happens at home

Although some people think about being a digital nomad -traveling while working- as the default setting for remote work, it is certainly not. Only 24% of the respondents of the "Anywhere Workers" study from And Co and Fiverr described themselves as digital nomads. Remote work is about having the flexibility to choose from where to work from: whether from home, a coffee shop, a coworking space, or from anywhere while traveling. It also seems that most of remote workers prefer the comforts of their home compared to other workplaces. 84% of those who answered Buffer's "State of Remote Work" survey shared that they perform their tasks at home, 8% work at coworking spaces, and about 4% at cafes.

Nothing is confidential, so write accordingly

Always remember what former CIA chief General David Petraeus apparently forgot, warns Pachter: Every electronic message leaves a trail. "A basic guideline is to assume that others will see what you write," she says, "so don't write anything you wouldn't want everyone to see." A more liberal interpretation: Don't write anything that would be ruinous to you or hurtful to others. After all, email is dangerously easy to forward, and it's better to be safe than sorry.

Within the last two decades, the percentage of

American workers with telecommuting experience has nearly quadrupled. This is unsurprising considering the many benefits of working from home such as increased productivity and work satisfaction, as well as reduced cost for employers. With so many advantages for both the employee and the employer, offering telecommuting options seems like a no-brainer for many businesses. However, telecommuting is still a fairly new concept and offers its own set of unique challenges. While many of these obstacles are fairly common among workers-from-home, solutions are readily available to those individuals who are determined to make telecommuting their way of work.

Repeat

As speakers, it's natural to worry about boring your audience by saying the same thing over and over. But here's the key: In any presentation, and especially in a remote presentation, any given audience member is going to miss a significant percentage of what you say. An email comes in, a colleague drops by, another meeting is coming up — the ways we can be distracted are endless. So if a piece of information is crucial, say it again — and again, and maybe even again. You can acknowledge the repetition, but don't fear it.

Share the screen

Ask someone to pull up a document while you continue to speak. This allows group participation without ceding control of the meeting.

Understanding Application Programming Interfaces

An API specifies the programming interfaces required for software applications to interact with other applications, much as a user interface specifies menus, screen layouts, and other aspects of how people interact with software applications. An API specifies the values that an application needs in order to perform a transaction or obtain desired information, as well as the values that will result from performing the task. An application that calls an API to accomplish a task does not need to know the details of how the API works. For example, Travelocity sells travel services online, including flights, car rentals, and hotel reservations. The company provides weather information on their Web site for travelers interested in the forecast for the cities they will be visiting. Rather than maintain their own weather data, Travelocity subscribes to a Web service from Weather Underground, a provider of weather data, and integrates Weather Underground's weather information on their Web site, as shown in Figure 6-16. This allows Travelocity to focus on its core business, travel, while providing value-added information to its customers.

Zoolz

An established cloud player with a strong pedigree. Hybrid backup, file versioning, very affordable, no live backup, lacks 2fa. There are lots of things to like about Zoolz Cloud Backup for both personal use and business deployment. It offers an easy to follow interface with excellent web management options, and the ability to combine cloud operations with local external storage. This UK-based company leverages Amazon's Glacier infrastructure to deliver a compelling price/performance ratio, with prices far cheaper than the competition. With 20PB of data stored for three million users for more than a decade, Zoolz is also not as ephemeral as some of its rivals.

iCloud

Apple's competitively priced cloud storage locker. Reasonable pricing, tight integration with Apple's platforms, only 5GB of free storage. If you want to back up your iPhone to iCloud, you'll need more than the free 5GB allowance Apple gives you, but compared to rivals iCloud prices are very reasonable. The Mac Finder app integrates iCloud Drive, where you can store any files you wish. Documents created in the iWork office suite are also saved to iCloud and can sync across your devices. Windows users can also sync their files with iCloud Drive using the official client, and access the iWork apps on the iCloud website.

Data Backup

As a small business owner, you probably are already aware of the importance of backing up your data. The Cloud simplifies the process by allowing your data to update as you work automatically. It also creates copies of your data off-site where it will be safe from any local natural disaster, theft, or malfunction.

Make meetings short and sweet

Attention spans are shorter during virtual meetings. Reduce the possibility of attendee multi-tasking by scheduling shorter but perhaps more frequent meetings of 30 to 60 minutes - 90 minutes tops. "These shorter gatherings are likely to keep everyone more engaged," DeRosa says. Also make sure to rotate meeting times to accommodate for time zone differences.

OneDrive

Backed by Microsoft and ideal for Windows users. Integrated directly into windows, file restoration features, free storage is only 5GB. It is integrated into Windows 10's File Explorer. You don't have to download an additional app - it's there to use out of the box, which is obviously very convenient for those who have made the jump to Microsoft's newest operating system. Microsoft's Photos app can also use OneDrive to sync pictures across all your devices. As of late March, Autodesk AutoCAD has been integrated with OneDrive which is good news for anyone using the software's drafting tools. In addition, you have a feature called Personal Vault, which gives you an added layer of protection. There's an app for Android and iOS devices, and there's even one in the App Store for Mac users (although it has received mixed reviews).

Are your colleagues playing conference call annoyance bingo?

Bad virtual meetings can drive people crazy - in multiple locales. Here's how to do better. Meetings can be the glue that holds virtual teams together. But bad virtual meetings simply leave people groaning in various locales across the country. They may even breed resentment. How can you avoid this? The most effective virtual teams meet once a week, according to Darleen DeRosa, Ph.D., managing partner with OnPoint Consulting and co-author of "Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance." Telephone and video conferences, however, come with a host of challenges that can result in decreased effectiveness. Virtual meeting participants may be located in different time zones with some meeting participants just starting their day while others are trying to wrap up their work. Virtual conferencing technology has improved, but technical difficulties can create additional frustration for attendees. Infrequent face-to-face contact and lack of visual cues makes communication more difficult. [ It's not your imagination: Some meetings hurt your brain. See our related story: How to run meetings that hurt less. ] "Creating a culture of trust is hard enough when everyone is local and shares the same office," says Donna Steffey, president of Vital Signs Consulting. "When they are dispersed, communication can break down and cooperation can disintegrate into distrust. Reducing the degree of social or emotional distance and increasing cooperation and quickly building trust becomes the primary challenge for the virtual leader during meetings." Poor virtual meeting management can lead to degradation of virtual team performance. However, virtual team leaders can take to several actions to better facilitate meetings from a distance.

We highlight the best cloud providers for consumers and businesses

Businesses and consumers are increasingly reliant on cloud based storage solutions instead of in-house, on-premise local storage hardware. Your files are stored in the cloud, which is a simplified view of what is essentially someone else's infrastructure (data center, server, hard drive, connectivity etc). Ever since Amazon popularised storage online with S3 (Simple Storage Service), 13 years ago, Google data shows that interest for "Cloud Storage" alone has increased by 40x over the past decade. So much so that people less frequently refer to it as "online storage". Given the multitude of cloud storage providers out there, one has to wisely choose a provider who will offer the maximum amount of low-cost storage and bandwidth, while still keeping your data safe.

Business Infrastructure in the Cloud

Businesses are interested in Infrastructure as a Service because it allows them the ability to scale their applications without having to procure additional hardware resources. Instead, businesses rent space and computing power from an IaaS provider. The IaaS provider operates data centers that contain high-end servers, each with multiple processors and terabytes of storage. Through a process known as virtualization, one host machine may be configured to operate as if it were several smaller, special-purpose servers. A virtual servers is one of several servers that may be configured on a host machine. Since one physical server may host several virtual server, consolidates the need for many physical devices, as shown in Figure 6-6. Using virtual servers provides a more efficient and effective use of processing and storage resources that might otherwise be underutilized. Virtualization allows businesses to have their own servers in the Cloud without having to manage any hardware or share a server with other companies.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Delivery of a computing platform over the Internet.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Delivery of a networked computing infrastructure over the Internet.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Delivery of software applications over the Internet.

Assign a Yoda

Candor is difficult even for co-located teams, but it's the number one gauge of team productivity. To keep people engaged during virtual meetings, appoint a "Yoda." Like the wise Jedi master in Star Wars, the Yoda keeps team members in line and makes sure everyone stays active and on topic. The Yoda keeps honesty from boiling over into disrespect by being courageous and calling out any inappropriate behaviors. At critical points during the meeting, the leader should turn to the Yoda and ask, "So, what's going on here that nobody's talking about?" This allows the Yoda to express the candor of the group and encourage risk-taking.

Collaboration and communication

Clearly communicating ideas to other team members or clients, as well as collaborating with them, can be also more challenging when doing it so in a remote environment, highly reliant in written and asynchronous communication, using project management systems or chat like tools, like Slack. This is why it's also important to set clear communication protocols, workflows and guidelines within the team, to know when it's important to have a video call -or recording and sending videos to clearly communicate by showing something- instead of just writing a message, leaving also certain time per week for team video meetings. Thankfully tools like Google Hangouts or Zoom calls are easy (and very cheap) to use.

Consumer Applications in the Cloud

Cloud computing makes it possible for companies to offer Web-based versions of popular personal computer applications such as e-mail services, document editing, photo editing, and instant messaging. Applications that were once limited to desktop use become more valuable when they can leverage the capabilities of the Internet. For example, both Gmail and Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access provide access to e-mail messages from within the browser, as shown in Figure 6-12. Gmail is an entirely Web-based e-mail service, whereas Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access is the online counterpart to the Microsoft Office Outlook desktop application. Gmail also provides links to a user's accounts on other Google-provided software applications that run within the Cloud, including Google Docs, Google Reader, and Google Sites. Users who would previously create or edit documents using applications installed on their personal computers and share these files with others via e-mail messages, may now take advantage of applications that run in the Cloud to create and share documents. ZohoWriter, Google Docs, and Microsoft Office Live, shown in Figure 6-13, provide online document, spreadsheet, and presentation editing, and storage, collaboration, and sharing capabilities.

Small Business Cloud File Storage

Cloud storing files—instead of on-site—can save a significant amount of moneyin hardware costs. People have access to and can work with documents they don't have in their personal possession. Saving and accessing files on the cloud is easy, making it an attractive option, even for nontechnical small business owners.

In addition to storing files in the

Cloud, many consumers benefit from Infrastructure as a Service by accessing computing capabilities and applications available through virtual computing platforms. A virtual computer is a Web application that provides computing capabilities similar to those offered by a physical computer. It is hosted on a server running in a remote data center and accessed over the Internet by visiting a Web page in a browser. G.ho.st is a company that provides a virtual computer and operating system services within the Cloud, as shown in Figure 6-5.

Be sure the guidelines match the goals and values of your entire organization.

Communication guidelines are bound to fail unless everybody in an organization is on the same page. "Assumptions are dangerous and can quickly create unnecessary friction and conflict," said Therese Gedda, founder and CEO of 30minMBA, a workplace culture and executive coaching company headquartered in Stockholm. When company leaders set and communicate expectations, people don't have to make assumptions. "Depending on the culture in the company, this doesn't need to be an issue," she said. "In my experience, in a thriving culture that is people- and purpose-centric, internal communication challenges are less of an issue than in companies that have a mediocre culture with low employee engagement." Gedda suggests that an organization's guidelines be extremely specific. For instance, to better manage e-mail, create a 1-to-5 scale of urgency and type the appropriate number into the subject line so the recipient can easily tell which messages to answer first.

Understanding Distributed Web Applications

Complex software applications make use of collections of reusable software modules that implement common tasks or special-purpose capabilities. Software developers rely on application programming interfaces to incorporate capabilities of external application modules in their own applications. An application programming interface, or API, is a software module that enables software applications to interact with each other. An application hosted on one server may send a request over the Internet to a service running on another server to perform a specialized task and return its outcome. Many companies provide APIs that are accessible over the Internet so that software developers can make use of their business data as part of Web applications. Web services are APIs that Web applications can request to run over the Internet.

NextCloud

DIY cloud storage solution. Innovative self-hosting solution, tailor your cloud locker to your needs, preconfigured setups available. It isn't an online cloud storage provider itself, but offers free software to download and install a cloud storage service on your own server. Using a server on your home network for cloud storage is much faster. You can also enable encryption and make sure the information never leaves your home network, which is far safer. If you've no server or IT experience, you can even purchase a preconfigured NextCloud Box (if you can find one) which comes with a 1TB hard drive and will work with an inexpensive Raspberry Pi board to keep your data synced. Unfortunately, NextCloud Box is sold out but you can check out the alternatives on their website.

Creating New Applications from Data in the Cloud

Data can be linked between applications by simply collecting and displaying the data without modification as part of an existing Web page or application, as used by portal pages or Facebook Connect. Web applications such as Friend or Follow access data from a Web site through its API and apply processing rules in order to create a new application that enables users to interact with that data in new ways. Mashups are Web applications that combine content or data from multiple online sources into new Web applications. Mashups have become a popular type of Web 2.0 application because many Web sites that host applications for social networking, photo and video sharing, searching, and mapping also provide APIs to access their data. Because mashups interact with live data on the Web, their contents are continually updated. Software developers can use these APIs not only to access the data, but also to make use of it in new applications. The ProgrammableWeb, shown in Figure 6-45, is a blog about mashups. It reports that mapping mashups are the most popular type of mashup, and photo mashups are the second-most popular.

Linking Data between Web Applications

Data can be linked between applications in a variety of ways. Web sites such as iGoogle and Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook Connect and OpenID gather data from different online sources to display without modification as part of an existing Web page or application. Web sites such as MSN, iGoogle, and myYahoo are examples of portal pages. Portal pages display customized online content from different sources on the same page.iGoogle, shown in Figure 6-39, displays live data from different sources. Data on a portal page can include text, such as the weather forecast or news headlines from CNET or Wired; audio content, such as broadcasts from National Public Radio; or video content, such as uploaded videos on YouTube. In a portal Web page, the content from one source does not interact with content from another. The portal page simply serves as a container for data coming from all of the different sources. You can rearrange content on a portal page by clicking and dragging the title bar of any content item to another content region on the page.

big data

Describes data sets whose large size requires special techniques to capture, manage, and store

Set aside time to read and respond to email

Don't leave your email program open all day long. Alerts and beeps from incoming messages can interrupt your work flow and leave you unfocused. Instead, schedule specific blocks of time throughout the day for checking your email. You might even try marking your calendar and setting your availability to "busy." If necessary, turn off your cellphone and shut your office door to prevent interruptions by family members (if you work from home) or employees. Craft an email reply like this one cited by Tim Ferriss in The 4-Hour Work Week: "Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to e-mail twice daily at 12:00pm ET [or your time zone] and 4:00pm ET. If you require urgent assistance (please ensure it is urgent) that cannot wait until either 12:00pm or 4:00pm, please contact me via phone at 555-555-5555." The amount of time required for reviewing email and replying will depend on how frequently you check messages and how many you typically receive. Some entrepreneurs find it more effective to dedicate 10 minutes every hour to email. Others prefer to only check email just two or three times a day.

Use professional salutations

Don't use laid-back, colloquial expressions like, "Hey you guys," "Yo," or "Hi folks." "The relaxed nature of our writings should not affect the salutation in an email," she says. "Hey is a very informal salutation and generally it should not be used in the workplace. And Yo is not okay either. Use Hi or Helloinstead." She also advises against shortening anyone's name. Say "Hi Michael," unless you're certain he prefers to be called "Mike."

The status of remote work

From digital marketing, Web development, sales, customer and technical support, to copywriting, translation and many more: Remote work is growing across many sectors for which the location of workers is not relevant anymore, but their knowledge and experience is. Before we peer into how remote work is expected to develop in the future, let's have a look at where the industry is so far. Remote work has undergone a lot of changes ever since the first flexible telecommuting companies showed up. New technologies have appeared, and older ones have faded away. Where does remote work stand after the a few years of evolution already?

Amazon Implements Virtualization

Each month between 2008 and 2009, Amazon averaged between 55 and 65 million unique visitors to their Web site, with the exception of November and December. During those months, the site reached 75 million unique visitors due to holiday-related purchases, as shown in Figure 6-8. Amazon had to scale their application to handle 10 million additional visitors very quickly during the holiday season. The acquisition of new hardware and setup of server platforms can be costly, with delivery times of days if not weeks. After the holiday season, these resources would not be used. Virtualization allows existing applications to be scaled across existing computing resources as needed. Amazon turned the lessons that they learned about scalability and virtualization into a business opportunity. By providing Infrastructure as a Service to other companies, Amazon allows small businesses that cannot afford their own network computing infrastructure to purchase computing power and storage from Amazon's virtualized resources. Amazon used their own Infrastructure as a Service to scale their own enterprise and, from that experience, learned that they can offer this service to other companies with similar needs.

Include a clear, direct subject line

Examples of a good subject line include "Meeting date changed," "Quick question about your presentation," or "Suggestions for the proposal." "People often decide whether to open an email based on the subject line," Pachter says. "Choose one that lets readers know you are addressing their concerns or business issues."

Today - The Entire Digital Universe

Experts estimate that more than 2,700,000,000,000,000,000 KB (2.7 zettabytes) of data exist in the digital universe today.

Have a start and stop time

Flexibility is a real benefit to working from home. Still, you'll likely want to create some structure. Even if you're not working 9 to 5, it's helpful to set aside hours that are reserved for work and hours that are work-free. Otherwise, you may find yourself forgetting to turn off your computer and working more hours than you should.

Remote work is rapidly growing

GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com data shows that regular work-at-home, among the non-self-employed population, has grown by 173% since 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce. Telecommuting in the US has seen a 115% increase in the past decade. These stats only prove that telework is rising in popularity every year and is likely to continue growing. This is consistent with the experiences we've seen in our Remoters interviews -in which remote based professionals and organizations share their journey- as well as feedback we've received from the remote based community. For example, in a recent interview, Matthew Howells-Barby shared how his team within Hubspot move to a remote work environment in the last year and how well it has worked for them, in a company that has also offices and is an "hybrid", with both remote based as well as in-office. "There seems to be a growing acceptance of remote working. All the stats suggest it is on an upward trend, and many jobs are well suited to it. Our team works remote and we love it, though there are some challenges to overcome... but that's no different to working in an office."

Computing in the Cloud with Google Docs

Google Docs is an integrated SaaS suite of Web applications for creating, storing, and sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in the Cloud. Google offers the use of these software tools and the necessary storage for documents created with them as a free service to its customers. Because the documents are stored on the Internet, you can access them from anywhere that you have an Internet connection and share the documents with other users. After logging in to Google Docs with your Google ID, Google Docs displays your Google Docs desktop, shown in Figure 6-26. You can create a new document, spreadsheet, presentation, folder, or form and organize the document using folders. Google Docs allows you to upload existing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations stored on your desktop in order to edit and share them with other users. These online applications have many of the same features as their Microsoft Office application counterparts. Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations offer additional features that take advantage of the Internet connectivity that is available when an application runs within the Cloud, such as sharing and collaborating on documents with other users. Shared documents will also appear in the Google Docs desktops of those users with whom you have shared them. Documents that you have not shared will only appear on your desktop. Figure 6-27 displays the process of inviting another user to collaborate on a Google presentation.

After entering a GoogleLookup formula,

Google Spreadsheets momentarily displays the word "Loading" until it evaluates the formula to determine the value to display in that cell. Hovering over the cell displays a dialog box with a hyperlink to the Web site from which GoogleLookup obtained the information. Google Sets is a tool that finds lists of related values. After entering one or two related values in a spreadsheet, point the mouse at the cell's handle in the lower right corner, press the CTRL key, and drag the cell down several rows. Google will fill each cell with a related value. Figure 6-35 displays a Google spreadsheet that uses Google Sets to automatically fill in the names of several states and uses GoogleLookup to look up the name of each state's Governor. The ImportHTML function imports a table or list from a Web page into a Google spreadsheet. Consider the Wikipedia page shown in Figure 6-36.

Creating Online Surveys with Google Forms

Google Spreadsheets offers an online editor called Google Forms to create forms for surveys, as shown in Figure 6-31. Forms can be distributed by including the URL in an e-mail message to friends or in a tweet to followers on Twitter. Users completing the survey view the form in their Web browsers, as shown in Figure 6-31(b). Google Forms stores the form and any user data submitted through the form in the Cloud as part of the Google spreadsheet. Each user's response is recorded directly in a Google spreadsheet, as shown in Figure 6-32. As users complete the form, each response is automatically appended as a new row in the Google spreadsheet, along with a timestamp that shows when the response was received. The results summary displays the responses to the survey as a chart.

Advanced Cloud-Based Features of Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets takes advantage of its connectivity to the Cloud by allowing users to create simple online surveys with its Google Forms application and to include and manipulate live data from the Web.

Structured Search: Google Squared

Google Squared adds structure to search results by providing the results in a table, or square, instead of as a list of Web sites. The first column of the table contains a list of items identified in the search that share a common category. Google Squared adds meaning to the search results by displaying the attributes for each of the items in the columns to the right. Users can search for and display additional attributes by adding a new column and can add additional items to the category by adding a new row. A Google Squared search for "New England colleges" is displayed in Figure 6-55. Google determines the items and the attributes that appear in the columns, including, in this example, Image, Description, Location, Type, and Conference. A hyperlink to the Web site from which the information was obtained is included in each square. You can add additional attribute columns, such as tuition, to the square by entering the attribute name in the Add columns text box and clicking Add. You can also add a new item at the bottom row of the square by entering its value in the Add items text box and clicking Add. In both instances, Google Squared will also offer suggestions for new items or attributes. Google Squared will update the entire square to display the values for the new row or column.

Facebook Connect is similar to

Google's Friend Connect, introduced in Chapter 5, in that it provides a single sign-on to applications that use the service. The main difference between Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect is that Facebook requires users to sign in using their Facebook credentials and links activity on those sites back to their Facebook accounts. Google Friend Connect allows users to join sites using their Google, AOL, or Yahoo! IDs but does not offer a centralized site that collects and displays all of a user's activities.

Spread the responsibility

Have team members take on a section of the meeting -- give an update on a project or an aspect of an ongoing initiative. Changing the voice will capture everyone's attention and get people used to contributing.

Formalize the water cooler

Have you ever been in a meeting, and just when it ends, everybody walks out and vents their frustrations next to the water cooler? Make the water cooler conversation the formal ending of the virtual meeting, instead. Five to 10 minutes before the meeting ends, do what everybody would've done after the physical meeting - but do it inthe meeting and make sure it's transparent and conscious, processing people's real feelings. How? Have everyone go around and say what they would've done differently in the meeting. This is like the final "Yoda" moment - it's the "speak now or forever hold your peace" moment. This is the time when you say what you disagreed with, what you're challenged with, what you're concerned about, what you didn't like, etc. All of the water-cooler-type conversation happens right now, or it never happens again. And if does happen later, you're violating the ethics of the team. Most importantly in virtual meetings, civility and respect must be the norm. There have to be inalienable, ethical rules that you follow before, during and after a virtual meeting for it to be truly successful. And that means adhering to two fundamental principles: Be respectful of others' time, and be present. Failing to do so steals precious hours from the team that can never be recovered. Co-located teams have enough problems building candor and trust; teams separated by distance really need to have great meetings to build these connections.

Reducing employee turnover

Have you ever sat down and worked out the average cost of on-boarding a new employee? According to Deloitte, this figure can be in the $4,000 range depending on the employment role. If your company experiences high turnover, you can solve this by introducing telecommuting as an option for your employees. Not only is it extremely attractive to the millennial worker, but Stanford University report found that job attrition rates fell by over 50 percent. A study by Staples Advantage found 76% of telecommuters were willing to work overtime and felt more loyal to their company with the option for remote work and telecommuting. Additionally, 80% reported a better work-life balance. Companies that prioritize a healthy work-life balance do not have the high turnover rates when compared to other businesses that down-prioritize work-life balance.

To import the data from the

Historical Population table on this page, you need to know which table on the page contains this information. Because this page contains multiple tables, you could view the HTML source of the page and count <table> tags until you find the one that begins the table containing the desired information, or you could make an educated guess based on the layout of the page to find the correct index value. Each number on the Wikipedia page shown in Figure 6-36 indicates data formatted as an HTML table. In this case, the table containing Historical Population data is the fifth table on the page. The ImportHTML function has three arguments: the URL for the Web page from which to import HTML, whether the data to import is coming from a table (in which case you would write "table") or a list (in which case you would write "list"), and the index, or position, of the table or list on the page containing the data. Enter the function =ImportHTML("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States", "table", 5) in cell A1 to add the Historical Populations table data to a Google spreadsheet, as shown in Figure 6-37. Selecting the Show formula bar from the View menu will display the formula associated with the active cell in a formula bar above the column headings at the top of the spreadsheet.

Drawbacks of Telecommuting

However, there can be downsides to working from home. You have to be extremely self-motivated or else you may get distracted easily. You also need to find a productive place to do work, such as a home office or coffee shop. Some people also find working from home to be a bit isolating because you are not around your coworkers. Routine meetings that use video chat can help alleviate this loneliness. When considering a telecommuting job, it is important to weigh these positives and negatives.

Be cautious with humor

Humor can easily get lost in translation without the right tone or facial expressions. In a professional exchange, it's better to leave humor out of emails unless you know the recipient well. Also, something that you think is funny might not be funny to someone else. Pachter says: "Something perceived as funny when spoken may come across very differently when written. When in doubt, leave it out."

pCloud

Ideal for those storing large media files. Affordable, elegant, intuitive interface, simple to use, no collaboration tools. While some bandwidth limits apply, there seems to be no limit to the size of files you can upload, so feel free to sync large media files with pCloud. The service is available for all desktop and mobile platforms - users can also log in via the website. The company itself is registered in Switzerland which has strong privacy laws and you can also pay a premium of $4.99 a month for pCloud Crypto to lock (and unlock) individual files with passwords. Note that it is one of the very few cloud services that offer lifetime subscriptions. The latter come with 30 days trash history and unlimited remote upload traffic (you only need the URL of the file); you are - as expected - limited on the download link traffic: 500GB for the Premium package and 2TB for the Premium Plus package.

Be a tough cop

If things start to veer off course, be assertive about keeping things to the stated agenda. And police yourself most of all: Don't start digressing as the leader of the conversation. Stay focused on your message.

Consider your outfit

If you are on a lot of video meetings, it's best to wear professional outfits. That way, you won't feel flustered if an unexpected meeting occurs. Plus, it'll put you in a state of mind that says "working," as opposed to "watching TV." Of course, comfy clothes are a major perk of working from home: Go ahead and put on your yoga pants if you don't have video meetings and can still work productively.

Use exclamation points sparingly

If you choose to use an exclamation point, use only one to convey excitement, Pachter says. "People sometimes get carried away and put a number of exclamation points at the end of their sentences. The result can appear too emotional or immature," she writes. "Exclamation points should be used sparingly in writing."

Use a professional email address

If you work for a company, you should use your company email address. But if you use a personal email account--whether you are self-employed or just like using it occasionally for work-related correspondences ---you should be careful when choosing that address, Pachter says. You should always have an email address that conveys your name so that the recipient knows exactly who is sending the email. Never use email addresses (perhaps remnants of your grade-school days) that are not appropriate for use in the workplace, such as "babygirl@..." or "beerlover@..." -; no matter how much you love a cold brew.

Kill mute

In a co-located meeting, there are social norms: You don't get up and walk around the room, not paying attention. Virtual meetings are no different: You don't go on mute and leave the room to get something. In a physical meeting, you would never make a phone call and "check out" from the meeting. So in a virtual meeting, you shouldn't press mute and respond to your emails, killing any potential for lively discussion, shared laughter and creativity. As leaders, we need to establish a standard: Just because you're in a virtual meeting and it's possible to be disrespectful, it has to be understood that it's unacceptable. We're talking about civility and respect for people, so if you wouldn't do it in person, don't do it virtually.

Remote work is here to stay and is not only about digital nomads

In a study done by Buffer.com about the state of remote work in 2019, 99% of the interviewees reported that they would like, at least once in their career, to be able to work off-site. This enormous figure not only proves that remote work is now immensely popular but also that it is not just a fading trend. Moreover, the respondents are very likely to recommend remote work to their friends and family, solidifying the statistic further. "I've noticed more and more of the projects are realizing a set office does not need to happen in the city where the owner lives." Many current employees are willing to change workplaces if it means working remotely. A report by Zapier.com published at the end of 2019 revealed that about 74% of the workforce would prefer to quit a job for one that offers remote positions. "I work remotely for companies from all over Europe (management/consultancy) and I'd say the corporate structures are becoming a lot more appreciative of all the benefits that remote work offers. There's no more scoffing at the mere idea of having an entirely remote based team."

Including Live Data from the Web in a Google Spreadsheet

In addition to computational functions that you are familiar with from a desktop spreadsheet program such as Excel, Google Spreadsheets includes Web functions that look up information on the Web and insert the results in spreadsheet cells. For example, computational functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, and MIN perform calculations on data. Each of these functions has arguments that specify the data values to which the function should be applied. For example, =SUM(3,5,7) calculates the sum of the numbers 3, 5, and 7, and the function =AVERAGE(B1:B4) calculates the average of the values of cells B1, B2, B3, and B4. Typically, the user must enter the values for which to calculate the sum or average as well as the formulas to do so. In Google Spreadsheets, Web functions, such as GoogleLookup, access live data on the Web by requiring the user to specify the information for which to search and to then bring the search results into the spreadsheet. Each function calls a Google API in order to access the requested data over the Web and include it in the spreadsheet. Table 6-3 describes some of the functions in Google Spreadsheets that access data from the Web.

Business Applications in the Cloud

In addition to consumer SaaS applications, many business applications are offered as software services in the Cloud. Software as a Service often has a pay-as-you-go licensing model, in which customers do not own the software but pay a fee for its use. The Salesforce Service Cloud, presented in Chapter 5, is a business application that runs in the Cloud. As shown in Figure 6-15, the Salesforce Service Cloud monitors conversations about a company's products that take place in Internet discussion forums, blogs, Google searches, and social networks. As customers search the Internet, rather than turn to a company's customer support center, to find answers to their problems, the Salesforce Service Cloud tries to capture the wisdom of the crowds to provide service to customers in the same forums or social networks in which they posed their questions. Salesforce leverages the fact that it is a SaaS application in order to connect to all of these sources on the Web and share knowledge with business partners. Salesforce users interact with this application through their Web browsers. Salesforce hosts, manages, and deploys the application from the Cloud so that users do not have to purchase or manage hardware or software. In addition to the Service Cloud, Salesforce offers customers the ability to select and subscribe to various modules, such as payment processing, sales forecasting, or customer management, and include them within their individual CRM environment.

A higher focus on mental health: Digital 'water cooler' interactions expected to rise

It can be more difficult for remote based teams to "feel important" or as "connected" with the company they work for. Teams rarely interact physically with each other, which may potentially lead to less cohesiveness within the group. This is a common problem that employers have to face as their jobs become more and more remote. Beyond the implementation of video conference or in-company chat tools, many will have the need to start reviewing their workflows, communication protocols and collaboration frameworks, to integrate remote work within them and update them to become more easily used in a hybrid or complete remote work environment much more easily, and to incentivize a fluid communication and better engagement among team members, to avoid isolation and potential mental health problems.

Platform as a Service: Application Development in the Cloud

In order to create software applications, companies have to purchase, maintain, and configure software, servers, databases, network access, and development tools. Platform as a Service (PaaS), shown in Figure 6-9, provides browser-based tools to develop and deploy Web applications, without having to purchase, install, or maintain any hardware or software. Many PaaS providers offer browser-based development tools that can be used by developers to design and build applications that are then deployed on the Web or to mobile devices. Once an application is deployed, performance tools monitor the application as it runs, capturing statistics that include the number of visitors, page load times, and other performance indicators. The PaaS provider monitors an application's performance and facilitates scalability by providing additional computing resources and data storage. A Platform as a Service provider will also perform regular system maintenance tasks, such as backups and software updates, and offer security features so that only authorized users can access data and applications. Platform as a Service is an attractive option for companies because PaaS vendors offer pay-as-you-go plans. Customers are only charged for the computing services that they actually use. Windows Azure Platform, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Force.com Platform from Salesforce, and Google App Engine are four PaaS products that offer development tools, technologies, and computing and storage resources to companies who wish to design and deploy applications in the Cloud. Table 6-2summarizes the services of these Platform as a Service providers.

Higher employee loyalty and retention rate

In the Owl Labs survey, Remote workers also said they are likely to stay in their current job for the next 5 years, which is 13% more than onsite workers. Additionally, 55% of remote workers said that they would be likely look for another job if they were no longer allowed to work remotely, showing how much remote workers value their remote work setting. Evidently, a flexible work environment has a positive impact on employee satisfaction and, ultimately, their retention.

Convenience

In video conferences through zoom, participants can also be divided into Zoom rooms, where a smaller group can discuss topics effectively or even discuss different things. This creates space for lengthier, more effective discussion and brainstorming. However, this is not possible with teleconferencing as conference calls allow only for one main group.

open data

Information that is free and open to access, redistribute, and reuse, without restriction.

structured data

Information that is stored in such a way that allows it to be searched and analyzed by machine.

Infrastructure as a Service: Computing in the Cloud

Infrastructure as a Service offers computing resources on demand to individuals and organizations that need them. Resources include storage of data as well as allocation of additional computing power for running applications that require intense processing or that receive thousands of visitors.

Improving productivity

It is estimated that employers in the US lose $1.8 trillion a year in productivity. From distractions like water cooler gossip to excessive commuting, health problems and more. Workers are finding it harder than ever to hit maximum productivity in a traditional office work environment. The solution? Telecommuting. According to the State of Work Productivity Report, 65% of full-time employees think a remote work schedule would increase productivity. This is backed up by more than two-thirds of managers reporting an increase in overall productivity from their remote employees. Where do telecommuters find this extra boost of productivity? With none of the distractions from a traditional office setting, telecommuting drives up employee efficiency. It allows workers retain more of their time in the day and adjust to their personal mental and physical well-being needs that optimize productivity. Removing something as simple as a twenty minute commute to work can make all world of difference. If you are ill, telecommuting allows one to recover faster without being forced to be in the office. It also improves the impact on our overall health. As a diabetic, health is the number one priority. If our health is not in good condition, then it is inevitable that our productivity will also decline.

Attend to the end

It is particularly important to provide clarity when wrapping up virtual meetings. You should review decisions and assignments before bringing the meeting to an end, says Axelrod. It can also be helpful to conduct a quick assessment at the close. Axelrod suggests asking participants to answer three questions: Was this meeting time well spent? What worked today that we should continue doing? What didn't work that out to be improved? This feedback can be used to improve the effectiveness of virtual team meetings over time.

Reply to your emails even if the email wasn't intended for you

It's difficult to reply to every email message ever sent to you, but you should try to, Pachter says. This includes when the email was accidentally sent to you, especially if the sender is expecting a reply. A reply isn't necessary but serves as good email etiquette, especially if this person works in the same company or industry as you. Here's an example reply: "I know you're very busy, but I don't think you meant to send this email to me. And I wanted to let you know so you can send it to the correct person."

The majority of the workforce already telecommutes part-time

It's noteworthy that a non-trivial share of what could be considered "traditional office oriented companies" are already offering location flexibility, many of them leaving some days to "work from home" per week as a perk to their employees. Recent studies by IWG show that about 70% of the entire global workforce telecommutes at least one day in a week already. "I remote work 4 days out of 5 a week. And I find I am so much more productive as it means meetings are only happening once a week for me. Don't get me wrong the whole day is a write off with meetings but it makes it easier for me to knuckle down the rest of the days."

Keep tabs on your tone

Just as jokes get lost in translation, tone is easy to misconstrue without the context you'd get from vocal cues and facial expressions. Accordingly, it's easy to come off as more abrupt that you might have intended --you meant "straightforward," they read "angry and curt." To avoid misunderstandings, Pachter recommends you read your message out loud before hitting send. "If it sounds harsh to you, it will sound harsh to the reader," she says. For best results, avoid using unequivocally negative words ("failure," "wrong," or "neglected"), and always say "please" and "thank you."

Use bullet points and verbal highlighting

Let your audience know that what you are about to say is crucial. "There are three main things you need to know: one ... two ... three ..." Or: "The most important thing to remember is ..." With these signals, you are telling your audience to pay attention. They might even take notes when they hear these words. This is a great technique in any communication setting, but it's essential when you are speaking over phone or video.

More Gen-Z employees expected into the market

Loosely defined as the generation born between the late 1990s and early 2000s, they come equipped with digital skills that are on high demand for remote workers, having studied in studied careers or received training completely online, which now even prepares them to also become a remote based professional, like microverse, training students to become a "remote software developer". For many of them, remote will be already the default work setting, which will facilitate further remote work popularization among the younger generations of workers.

Take action immediately

Making quick decisions and pursuing immediate action will help keep your email inbox under control. The idea is to not delay until tomorrow what can be accomplished right away. When you check your messages, browse the inbox for emails that can be immediately deleted such as spam or promotional emails. Then select messages that don't require a response and delete or archive them. Once you've pared down the number of messages in your inbox, you'll be able to better evaluate which ones are the most critical. Don't let important emails sit in your inbox for days. Unless you're on vacation, respond within 48 hours. Reply to the sender as soon as you've read his or her message. If you're unable to respond immediately, communicate to the sender that you received the message and will be in touch shortly. Set a deadline and follow up.

Jobs That Allow Telecommuting

Many industries—including sales, customer service, and marketing—offer telecommuting jobs. Many jobs in technology (including computer and software programming) can also be done via telecommuting. Some medical professionals, including health claims analysts and even some radiologists, have begun to work from home.

File Storage

Many small businesses use images, audio, and video to enhance their marketing activities. These files often take up a significant part of your hard drive space, which can be costly. The cloud allows you to shift the storage of large files off of your local system, saving local storage for the files you need to access every day.

A Semantic Search Engine: Bing

Microsoft's Bing search engine attempts to understand a search query in order to provide meaningful results. Unlike search engines whose search results are based on keyword matching and incoming hyperlinks to a Web page, semantic search engines have the ability to discern meaning from a search query in order to provide related relevant information. The results of a Bing search for information about Mount Rushmore are shown in Figure 6-53. Bing takes a semantic approach to search. Bing infers meaning from a user's search query. For example, Bing recognizes that "Mt Rushmore" is an abbreviation for Mount Rushmore, and provides search results for both terms. Bing also organizes search results by category and suggests queries for users to obtain specific information, such as the names of the presidents who appear on Mount Rushmore or related information, such as information about other national parks. To improve the user's experience, Bing provides a preview of each search results page and adds meaning by displaying a summary and hyperlinks to sections of search results pages. Bing partners with other information providers such as Wikipedia, Twitter, Wolfram|Alpha, a computational engine, and Freebase, an open online database of the world's information, in addition to performing a keyword pattern search, to provide meaningful search results.

Know that people from different cultures speak and write differently

Miscommunication can easily occur because of cultural differences, especially in the writing form when we can't see one another's body language. Tailor your message to the receiver's cultural background or how well you know them. A good rule to keep in mind, Pachter says, is that high-context cultures (Japanese, Arab, or Chinese) want to get to know you before doing business with you. Therefore, it may be common for business associates from these countries to be more personal in their writings. On the other hand, people from low-context cultures (German, American, or Scandinavian) prefer to get to the point very quickly.

Remote focused tools, services and resources will continue to grow

More "virtual workplaces" tools that are focused on facilitating the collaboration and communication of remote based teams -like PukkaTeam- will be launched. Although we now have already a few remote friendly communication and collaboration software these aren't tools that were designed to be used by team members that could be located in very different locations, timezones, connection types, that also require an on-going, "in-person" like experience to mitigate the isolation challenges of remote working individuals. "I'm currently "remoting" and found that Wi-fi speeds are so much better these days. Never worry about taking a call on Skype / video. Also for many phone networks roaming charges are normally the same as back at home so you don't have to sim swap constantly"

A rise of "hybrid" in-office and remote based companies

More older and bigger companies will start "testing" remote work in an "hybrid" environment, so instead of switching completely to a remote based environment, they will begin by working a few days per week from home, and progressively tackling the already known remote work isolation or communication challenges -as well as potential concerns with productivity-, while they start to profit from many of the advantages, especially with more motivated and loyal team members. "...for me what changed was that I went more combo (1 day with client, few days head down remotely), clients seem to like this model more."

Number of Participants

More people can participate in a video conference than in a teleconference. In a teleconference, if there are more than a handful of people, things become a lot more chaotic. They are more useful for smaller groups and quicker discussions. However, in a video conference, people are able to stay more disciplined. This is because of certain video meeting tools that are offered by Zoom. These tools split the screen for multiple participants, while automatically focusing on the one speaking. Participants can also mute themselves if they aren't speaking reducing the amount of chaos that is caused.

Give your audience time

Most facilitators wait five to eight seconds for an audience to answer a question before moving on. It's awkward to sit in silence. But when you are on the phone or video, participants might have muted their line or hesitate to be the first one to speak up (see above). You may need to let that silence hang a bit longer to get the response you want.

Ban multitasking

Multitasking was once thought of as a way to get many things done at once, but it's now understood as a way to do many things poorly. As science shows us, despite the brain's remarkable complexity and power, there's a bottleneck in information processing when it tries to perform two distinct tasks at once. Not only is this bad for the brain; it's bad for the team. Managers should set a firm policy that multitasking is unacceptable, as it's important for everyone to be mentally present.

Starbucks used Salesforce CRM when developing

My Starbucks Idea, their customer feedback and social network discussed in Chapter 5. Salesforce also provides a development platform known as Force.com for software developers to create, deploy, and manage Web applications. Salesforce CRM powers Starbucks' Pledge5 Web site, shown in Figure 6-10, which encourages customers to take part in community service. Because the Pledge5 site was going to be promoted on national television, it needed to be able to handle the hundreds of thousands of anticipated users who would visit after viewing the program. Force.com provided a scalable infrastructure, connectivity to Facebook, and Web site management tools necessary to rapidly build and deploy this application.

Unsubscribe from unwanted promotional emails

Newsletters and advertisements can overwhelm your inbox and bury important messages. Clean out the clutter. Unsubscribe from receiving messages from specific senders if you no longer want to receive their missives or don't have the time to read them. To make the unsubscribe process quick and painless, search your inbox for the term "unsubscribe." Review the search results and determine whose emails you would continue to welcome and the missives you would prefer to live without.

Decreasing costs

No matter what size business you run, keeping costs to a minimum is always on the agenda. Telecommuting helps reduce operating costs, cash in on the appeal factor and boost your bottom line. According to Aetna, an insurance giant in America, it shed 2.7 million square feet of office space and as a result saved $78 million. American Express reported similar results by saving $10-15 million annually thanks to its telecommuting policies. You might be thinking, "Okay, sure that works for them, but what about the little guys?" Global Workplace Analytics reports that if a typical business allowed their employees to telecommute for just half of the time, they could save on average $11,000 per year. Other costs that can be avoided or reduced include office supplies, furniture, equipment, coffee and janitorial services.

Think twice before hitting 'reply all'

No one wants to read emails from 20 people that have nothing to do with them. Ignoring the emails can be difficult, with many people getting notifications of new messages on their smartphones or distracting pop-up messages on their computer screens. Refrain from hitting "reply all" unless you really think everyone on the list needs to receive the email, Pachter says.

Cost savings

Not only do the employees save money off when working remotely, but also their employers make significant savings as well. Running a physical workspace can be expensive, especially if you're in a big city. Costs like office rent, buying and maintaining office furniture, and monthly utility bills are sure to bring down the profits obtained from running the business at the end of the day. Introducing remote work can drastically decrease the costs incurred to keep the business running, saving up to $10,000 for every remote worker. "Some perks for companies: 1) Hiring remote workers allows you to hire from a much larger talent pool vs hiring locally. 2) It reduces office space costs. 3) Successful remote workers tend to be self-starters and have good communication skills. Great assets for any company."

Come prepared with the team's opinions

Not only do you need to do your pre-reads, but once you see the agenda, make sure you discuss with your team what is going to be covered - that is, do your own due-diligence. What happens all too often is that people get on virtual calls with a point of view, but because they haven't done any real homework before the call, they end up reversing their opinions once the call has ended and they've learned new information that they could have easily obtained in advance. If there's a topic that seems to have interdependencies with people who work in our location, get their input ahead of time so you're best representing those constituents in the meeting.

Flexible work schedule

Not surprisingly, Buffer found that 40% of remote workers reported that flexibility was one of the biggest perks of working remotely. The ability to work during one's productive hours and to choose the days of the week in which to work is also a big plus for remote workers. This flexibility allows workers to plan their day better and spend more quality time with their families.

Magnetic Drum 1932 (48KB)

One big step for the magnet. The first magnetic drum held 48 KB, about five formatted .doc files. Drum memory was originally invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932, but magnetic drum memory wasn't used in computing until US Navy codebreakers developed it during World War II. One drum was 16 inches long and held 40 tracks that spun at 12,500 revolutions per minute. Engineering Research Associates (ERA) continued development of the technology with their Atlas project. Drum memory consisted of a long metal cylinder coated in magnetic material, with rows of read-write heads situated on the axis of the drum. It was once used as a primary storage device and remained common in computing through the 50s and 60s, but is now used as an auxiliary storage device.

Mobile Working

One of the great benefits of technology is the ability for small business owners to create fully functional mobile offices. The cloud fits in perfectly with this because it allows you to access and sync your data from wherever you are, allowing you to take your office with you on the road.

Isolation

One of the most appealing things about telecommuting may also be one of the most unpleasant things about it. Unless you live alone, feelings of loneliness and isolation may not be a huge issue. However, some telecommuters have reported small cases of cabin fever; after weeks of work isolation and nothing but email correspondence, having a real conversation with anyone even that really annoying coworker - sounds good. Luckily, the age of technology has given us unlimited tools to communicate and collaborate with others while working remotely. Instead of chatting over a cubicle wall, you can utilize tools like Slack, Trello, Skype, and many more to share ideas with co-workers and attend virtual meetings. Because many of these programs are designed specifically with telecommuters in mind, they offer a comfortable and convenient platform with which remote employees can achieve maximum productivity. While these are the most common issues facing those who telecommute, there are a variety of others. No IT team means that a tech issue could take days of frustration to fix, no physical supervisor means that social media is always just a click away, and depending on your personal responsibilities you could go days without leaving your house, which is generally not recommended. Regardless, many workers are finding telecommuting to be a pleasant experience, and have reported that they feel happier and more valued as compared to working in an office setting. As a result, more and more companiesare beginning to offer work-from-home options to their employees, including big names like IBM, About.com, and SAP.

Consumer Infrastructure in the Cloud

One popular application of a Cloud computing infrastructure for consumers is the ability to store photos, music, documents, and other files in the Cloud so that they are available on many devices, as shown in Figure 6-2. Some Cloud storage applications automatically back up and synchronize these files, whereas others serve as holding places for documents, photos, and music that users upload to the Cloud.

Authenticating with OpenID

OpenID is an authentication service. An authentication service allows users to sign on to many different Web sites using a single, common digital identity. OpenID allows individuals to register their identities with certified OpenID identity providers such as Google, Yahoo!, Blogger, and AOL. If you have an account on one of these services, you already have an OpenID, as shown in Figure 6-42. You can log in to a site that supports OpenID using the information shown in Figure 6-42. You can also use a third-party identity provider site such as claimID to create an OpenID that is not associated with other identities that you may already have.

End on time

Or early! Stay on task so that you can wrap up well within your stated timeframe. No one ever wants a meeting to go late, especially when they have a full slate of other meetings that fills the rest of their day. Give everyone a chance to absorb the information you've imparted and to clear their heads for the next task to come. So much of effective communication is about making a connection, and there's no doubt that a virtual connection is more difficult. But with a little time, preparation and a few key techniques, you'll be able to engage, inform and persuade your audience whether they are across the room or across the globe.

Double-check that you've selected the correct recipient

Pachter says to pay careful attention when typing a name from your address book on the email's "To" line. "It's easy to select the wrong name, which can be embarrassing to you and to the person who receives the email by mistake."

Connect people

People perform better when they are comfortable with each other, which affords a greater degree of candor and mutual interest. Your job as a leader, particularly when people may not know each other, is to make them feel connected so you can have a productive meeting. How? Do a personal-professional check-in at the beginning of each meeting. Have team members take one minute and go around to talk about what's going on in their lives personally and professionally. Go first to model the approach for what doing it "right" looks like, in terms of tone and candor. Remind everyone to respect each other by not interrupting and to only say what they're comfortable sharing with the group.

Include a signature block

Provide your reader with some information about you, Pachter suggests. "Generally, this would state your full name, title, the company name, and your contact information, including a phone number. You also can add a little publicity for yourself, but don't go overboard with any sayings or artwork." Use the same font, type size, and color as the rest of the email, she says.

Data as a Service (DaaS)

Providing data on demand over the Web, often for use in building mobile or Web applications

Keep your fonts classic

Purple Comic Sans has a time and a place (maybe?), but for business correspondence, keep your fonts, colors, and sizes classic. The cardinal rule: Your emails should be easy for other people to read. "Generally, it is best to use 10- or 12- point type and an easy-to-read font such as Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman," Pachter advises. As for color, black is the safest choice.

Mega

Puts a premium on security. Easy-to-use UI, extremely generous free offering, sync client is open source. With an insanely generous free tier and a simple drag-and-drop interface, New Zealand-based Mega is one of the cloud storage heavyweights. There's a handy mobile app to allow you to upload files and photos, as well as sync clients with desktop machines. The company also has business tailored plans. Mega claims that all data stored in its cloud is encrypted on your device before it reaches the firm's servers. As the company has released the source code to its sync client, experts can check that there are no vulnerabilities.

How Telecommuting Works

Rather than traveling to the office, the employee "travels" via telecommunication links, keeping in touch with coworkers and employers via telephone, online chat programs, video meetings, and email. The worker may occasionally enter the office to attend meetings in-person and touch base with the employer. However, with many options for distance conferencing, there may be no need to visit the office.

Additional Data Tools and Providers

Recognizing that data is often a company's biggest asset, several commercial data sharing sites enable companies and individuals to upload and share their data online. Many provide interactive exploration tools and developer APIs similar to those found on Data.gov. Some companies choose to keep their data proprietary, making it available as a service only to users who pay for access, while other data providers offer their data for free. Companies that provide data online along with tools for analysis and APIs for developers are known as Data as a Service (DaaS) providers. Along with Software, Infrastructure, and Platform as a Service, Data as a Service has become an important capability of Cloud Computing. Data as a Service refers to treating data as a product, and providing it on demand to subscribers over the Internet. Because data and applications that use it both reside in the Cloud, developers can create Web-based and mobile applications that access the most up-to-date information. Companies and individuals use Data as a Service providers such as DataMarket, InfoChimps, Freebase, and Factual, shown in Figure 6-9, to make their data available online. Some companies that make proprietary data available through these providers will charge a fee to users or developers who access it.

DBpedia hosts another application called

RelFinder that fnds relationships between apparently unrelated topics on Wikipedia. RelFinder searches the DBpedia database for common characteristics shared between different items. Each directed line in the graph in Figure 6-13 represents a relationship between two items. For example, Figure 6-13 shows that George H.W. Bush's alma mater is Yale University and Anderson Cooper's education also took place at Yale University. In this fgure, RelFinder also fnds that both Anderson Cooper and President George H. W. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, were guests on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Build in relationship-building

Relationships are just as important in a virtual team as they are for a co-located team, but virtual team leaders tend to focus more on task than connection, says DeRosa. In some cases, you may want to distribute photos and short biographies prior to the meeting. Also, a quick 30-second roll call at the start of the meeting can make sure that participants are connected to one another, particularly when they don't work together day to day, Axelrod says. "Just like in a face-to-face meeting, we should greet people when they join the meeting and take time to connect on a personal level," DeRosa says. To accommodate this - and give your team the chance to build relationships - add time to the agenda for casual conversation.

A broader pool of professionals to choose from

Remote positions mean that employers no longer have to be restricted to hire local professionals -or having to relocate people to bring them to the company, which can end up being much more difficult- to fit their vacancies. The global workforce is up for grabs, opening up a vast market to select the best potential professionals from anywhere in the word. This also facilitates company's workforce to be diverse and balanced.

Distractions

Remote professionals needs to be highly self-disciplined as they can up facing several unique distraction related challenges not faced by their counterparts in the office, especially when working from home, where it can be felt that there are other "non-work related" things to do all the time: from taking care of children to household chores. If distractions are a challenge, then it's recommended to set a home office, and if this is not possible, going to a coworking space, along using project management tools with clear deadlines, to-do's lists per day or following time managements methods, like the Pomodoro technique.

Better Job Opportunities for professionals living in smaller towns and developing countries

Remote work also gives the opportunity to develop the careers of qualified professionals from smaller locations, in many occasions rural towns or developing countries, that can now grow professionally independently of their location and nationality, without the limitation of having to be hired only from local companies, that might not be looking for people with their qualifications. For companies: On the other hand, companies also have a lot to gain from offering remote work positions. These are some of the top benefits:

Challenges facing remote work

Remote work also has some disadvantages that are worthy to mention, as they have become more obvious now that more companies and freelancers have embraced this way of work:

Loneliness

Remote work also separate the employees from each other, with minimal interaction between them. Face-to-face interactions, are replaced by online meetings and collaborative online workspaces, however, they tend to be lacking. The net effect of this limited human interaction is that remote workers tend to feel isolated. The issue may be compounded if the remote worker has few friends, no spouse, or lives alone and works from home. If not dealt with correctly, loneliness may spiral down to other mental health issues. Remote is becoming more collaborative, whether through co-working days via Hangouts or monthly mastermind meetups IRL. It's increasingly less isolated. This can be avoided by going to a coworking space a couple of days per week, doing regular meetups with work colleagues who live nearby, and if there are not many of them, by going to industry meetups or events. Since this is now a more known issue, remote based organizations also organize company retreats once or twice per year, so the team can build a stronger, in-person connection too. Additionally, there are more "remote workplaces" tools, like Pukkateam or Sneek, that look to incentivize communication and provide an "in-person" like experience to remote based teams.

Unplugging from work

Remote workers are more prone to be workaholics, especially when the deadlines are strict and there's a heavy workload. Since remote workers mostly perform their duties from home, it can also be challenging to shift from the work atmosphere and to enjoy free time available. This is one of the most significant challenges faced by the industry, with 22% of remote workers reporting some difficulty in switching from work to leisure activities. Nonetheless, this challenge can be worked around by setting a specific area to work from within the person's home, by going to nearby coworking spaces or coffee shops to work from and by creating strict work schedules. "I definitely think these last 12 months as an industry, we've put an better emphasis on bringing awareness to the mental health struggles remote workers face and have made positive strides towards implementing better peer support networks."

Jory MacKay, marketing manager at

RescueTime, a provider of time management software headquartered in Seattle, said expectations about workplace communications should be clearly spelled out but often aren't. A RescueTime survey of more than 500 workers found that three-fourths had never discussed communication guidelines with a colleague or manager. "Giving someone the 'right' to ignore e-mail or Slack or texts doesn't mean they don't use those tools. We all need to communicate to do our jobs," MacKay said. "It simply means that employees don't feel the need to constantly check in or leave their inboxes open all day." Survey data from RescueTime shows that most people don't go more than six minutes without checking their inboxes or chat apps at work. "In most companies, the current practice is that employees leave all communication channels open all day long and check each message as it arrives," said Maura Nevel Thomas, a speaker, trainer and author on business productivity and attention management. "This guarantees that they never have an opportunity to do undistracted, thoughtful work."

Turn the video on

Since everyone on the call is separated by distance, the best thing you can do to make everyone at least feel like they're in the same room is to use video. There are many options to choose from, such as WebEx and Skype. Video makes people feel more engaged because it allows team members to see each other's emotions and reactions, which immediately humanizes the room. No longer are they just voices on a phone line; they're the faces of your co-workers together, interacting. Without video, you'll never know if the dead silence in a virtual meeting is happening because somebody is not paying attention, because he's rolling his eyes in exasperation or nodding his head in agreement. Facial expressions matter.

Communicate with your manager

Since your supervisor will no longer see you at your desk, you'll want to make sure you show in other ways that you're working and are an engaged employee. Be communicative on email and chat programs, and share completed projects. Make sure to have scheduled one-on-one meetings in which you review what you've completed and what you are working on with your supervisor, too.

SD Card 1999 (64,000KB)

Size matters not. Unless you're getting smaller, more portable data storage, that is. The first SD cards held around 64MB, enough to hold 50 photos or 13 minutes of low-resolution video which is around 1/11 of a CD. The highest capacity of an SD card today is 1 terabyte. The Secure Digital standard was a joint development by SanDisk, Panasonic, and Toshiba in 1999. This technology built on previous iterations, such as the MultiMediaCard (MMC). SD cards use flash memory, which stores data in cells made of floating-gate transistors. The small size and thinness of the cards made them ideal for digital photography and videography. Later, mini and micro sizes of the cards were released.

Work-Life Balance

Speaking of boundaries, creating a boundary between work and life when working from home can be particularly difficult. Telecommuting often comes with flexible hours, which seems nice until you find yourself pushing three hours past quitting time and missing family dinner. Conversely, the temptation of sleeping in or otherwise procrastinating means that your productivity could suffer. Organized time-management is key when working from home. Set a start and end time for yourself and stick to it. Reclaim the time you would typically spend commuting: use these minutes to write a daily schedule or catch up on emails. Change out of your pajamas and dress as if you are going to the office to get in the right mindset before you enter your home office, and silence your personal phone. At the end of the workday, reach a comfortable stopping point in your task and shut down the office. This includes turning off your computer and work phone, and perhaps even changing back into more comfortable clothes.

private cloud

Storage of files and resources on an internal, or proprietary network.

hybrid cloud

Storage of files and resources on both a user's computer and on servers, made available over the Internet.

public cloud

Storage of files and resources on servers available to the public over the Internet.

iDrive

Storage solution which extends to cover network drives. Fast, easy to use, good security, drive express service is handy if disaster strikes, no two-factor authentication. It offers continuous syncing of your files, even those on network drives. The web interface supports sharing files by email, Facebook and Twitter. Cautious or click-happy users will be pleased to hear that files deleted from your computer are not automatically deleted from the server, so there's less danger of removing something important by accident. Up to 30 previous versions of all files backed to your account are retained. Another thing to note is that IT admins have access to IDrive Thin Client application, which allows them to backup/restore, manage settings, and more for all their connected computers via a centralized dashboard. For photos, you have a neat facial recognition feature that helps you to automatically organize them as well as syncing them across all your linked devices. IDrive also offers IDrive Express which sends you a physical hard disk drive if you lose all your data, allowing for the swift restoration of all your backed up files. That applies to the newly introduced disk image backup feature. A business version exists and offers priority support, single sign-on as well as unlimited users and server backup. Furthermore, IDrive Cloud, an enterprise-class cloud object storage is also available.

Punch Cards 1980 (.08KB)

Super retro. Punch cards were the first mechanical storage method. A punch card holds about 80 characters, so not even a fully fleshed out tweet could fit on one. The punch card dates back to the 19th century, when it was used to program mechanical devices such as looms and player pianos. Punch cards were commonly used for computer programming through the 1980s. Although punch cards are now obsolete as a recording medium, we still use punch cards to store data today, mainly in standardized tests and voting.

Participation

Teleconferencing allows you to be a part of a virtual meeting even while you're on the move. As for Web Video Conferencing, one cannot participate in such a conference while traveling as other participants can see your surroundings. If you do participate in a video conferencing while traveling, not only is it disrespectful, it can also prove to be distracting to the people on the video call with you.

Improved employee morale

Thanks to the flexibility of remote work, employees become also more motivated and are bound to be more productive at the workplace. High employee morale translates to less turnover, greater enthusiasm for work, and higher job satisfaction rates. Remote work give us more variety and quality in work from different regions. we have been doing this for last years and we got more productivity and quality vs local.

Interacting with Data from Data.gov

The Data.gov Web site provides tools for analyzing open data sets interactively. Users can search, sort, flter, analyze, and visualize data, and then share it online. For example, consider hospital data from data.medicare.gov, the Medicare Web site, shown in Figure 6-6. By selecting Visualize, the user can create a mashup that displays the locations of the hospitals on a Google map. Setting up the map requires specifying the type of map, the location to plot, and the details to display in the callout that will appear when a user clicks on one of the points plotted on the map.

The Structure of Distributed Applications

The Internet makes it possible for both people and Web applications to communicate and share information with each other. Many Web applications also take advantage of the Internet's connectivity to access Web services to provide specialized information or content. A model of three-tiered architecture for Web applications was introduced in Chapter 2. To review, three-tiered architecture, shown in Figure 6-18, includes a presentation tier, which is responsible for all aspects of displaying information to the user. The presentation tier communicates with the middle tier, which performs the application's logic and obtains data from a database tier.

Floppy Disk 1967 (80KB)

The Save Icon. The first 8-inch floppy disk developed held 80KB, enough to hold 8 formatted .doc files. The floppy disk was developed at IBM's San Jose laboratory in 1967. Originally, floppy disks were uncovered magnetic disks, hence the "flop." Later, plastic envelopes were added to protect from dirt and scratches and varying sizes of the disk emerged. By 1978, more than 10 manufacturers were producing 5¼ inch floppy drives, but you might remember the 3½ inch disk best. By the mid-70s, floppy disks were the most widely used form of portable data storage. Floppy disks have limited use today, but are shockingly still used in US nuclear bases.

Linking Data in Context: A Prelude to Web 3.0 and Beyond

The World Wide Web provides a means for people to post documents and information online for others to view and download. Web 2.0 introduced browser-based collaboration and publishing tools that simplified the process of creating, sharing, and finding content on the Web, allowing anyone to contribute. Content expanded from text and image to include voice and video, as bandwidth increased to support these forms of multimedia. Web 2.0 created a culture of participation, allowing people to share their ideas and stories online and to come together in online communities. Web 2.0 is a database-backed Web where information is exchanged through RSS feeds, Web services, APIs, and XML technologies. Finally, Web 2.0 casts the Web as a platform for applications, with data and applications stored in the Cloud and accessed from laptops, netbooks, cell phones, and gaming consoles.

Hiring stats from companies

The attractiveness of remote work has been already identified by companies that look to hire "hard to fill roles" and are using it as a perk to attract applications for "location independent" positions, opening themselves to hire from a bigger, more diverse pool of applicants, in some cases also, with lower rates -as higher rates are many times connected to living in a big, expensive city-. "Remote is becoming less career restrictive. More employers are willing to have conversations with employees and candidates to have remote be an option. More so, companies are adopting remote as part of their company culture vs remote just being a work from home option." In a recent interview with Hamlet Batista, CEO of RankSense, he shared how they struggled to hire technical roles when running his company in the Dominican Republic as they couldn't find professionals with the relevant technical qualifications and experience, and then how when they moved to New York, despite of being based in a big city with one of the biggest pools of potential professionals to hire, they also had a hard time since they needed to compete with some of the biggest brands in the world that are based there and willing to pay more. This changed when they started to hire remotely, as now they can hire the best professionals from anywhere in the world. This might be one of the reasons why -based on a study by Owl Labs- small companies are 2X more likely to hire full-time remote employees. "It's getting more acceptance from companies which is notable from the increase of remote workers I've met abroad. And from the other side of the coin there's also an increase of awareness from workers that this is becoming an option."

Despite being glued to their reply buttons, plenty of managers still don't know how to use email appropriately.

The average US employee spends about a quarter of the work week combing through the hundreds of emails we all send and receive every day. But despite the fact that we're glued to our reply buttons, career coach Barbara Pachter says plenty of professionals still don't know how to use email appropriately. In fact, because of the sheer volume of messages we're reading and writing each day, we may be more prone to making embarrassing errors--and those mistakes can have serious professional consequences. Pachter outlines the basics of modern email etiquette in her book "The Essentials Of Business Etiquette." We pulled out the most essential rules you need to know.

Better for your health and the environment

The average person in the U.K. spends 60-80 minutes getting to and from work. With the drive to reduce our carbon footprint, telecommuting is an excellent way for your company to go green and improve your employees general well being. In a report published by the Royal Society for Public Health in the UK, it found that 55% of people felt more stressed as a result of their commute. Snacking habits also increased and with less free time available, the report also found that workers were leading less active and healthy lifestyles. In a 2014 study by PGi, a leading provider of software services, it found that 80% of remote workers reported higher morale, 82% said it helped lower their stress levels, and 69% reported lower absenteeism.

Digital Video Disc (DVD) 1995 (1,460,000KB)

The bigger, badder compact disc. The first DVD had 1.46 GB of storage, big enough to hold a short movie or 2 CDs. Some manufacturers make dual-sided, single-layer discs that can hold 9.4 GB of data. Also developed by Sony and Phillips, in addition to a host of other technology companies, the DVD came to be in 1995. The DVD stores data using the same optical functions as the CD, with improved storage capabilities. This time, the DVD changed the movie industry up, phasing out the widely used Video Home System (VHS). After enjoying its day in the sun, the DVD was later eclipsed by the Blu-ray disc.

Flexibility and Automation

The cloud and the way you use it can grow and change as your business needs grow and change. Instead of having to invest in information technology to keep your file storage system updated and maintained, most applications that use the cloud automatically update themselves. Of course, there also are negatives to using the cloud. Security of data and loss of complete control over that data are serious concerns. However, there are ways to protect your data to ensure it remains accessible and secure at all times. In most cases, the benefits far outweigh the risks for small business owners. Also, if anything should happen to files stored on one cloud server—like a massive power outage—you can still access the information stored there through other servers. Here are some of the ways small businesses can use the cloud. Review this list and how it applies to your business as you explore how the cloud can help you use technology to do more with less.

Growth Planning

The cloud is scalable, so it allows small businesses to create a plan for growth that utilizes the benefits of the cloud without a significant up-front investment. You can start small and gradually increase your usage over time, paying only for the services and access you need. The cloud is also self-managed by the apps that provide the services, so you can eliminate or reduce the need for an in-house IT staff to manage your technology. Small business owners who want to reduce costs without sacrificing their ability to do business and compete with larger companies are using the cloud. If you are ready to put the cloud to work for your business, you can start small, so you can see the benefits without making major changes to your operations. Over time, you will discover new ways to use and benefit from the cloud.

For the environment: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

The daily commute to work usually results in millions of oil barrels being spent to run the transportation vehicles. Taking more people off the roads means that less fuel will be consumed to ferry people around, positively impacting the environment.

Blu-ray Optical Disc 2003 (25,000,000KB)

The disc. The myth. The legend. This high definition disc supported and stored 25 GB of high definition video at 1080p, which is around 36 CDs. Sony has cranked up optical disc storage to 3.3 terabytes today. Intended to be the successor to the DVD, the Blu-ray optical disc was developed by a technology industry consortium. While older DVDs were only capable of 480p resolution, the Blu-ray swooped in with more than double the capacity. The name was derived from the relatively short wavelength blue laser capable of reading a higher density of data on the disc as opposed to the red laser used for reading DVDs.

USB Flash Drive 1999 (8,000KB)

The drive of many names. The first flash drive developed held 8MB, so one or two eBooks, 90 seconds of low-resolution video or 800 .doc files. The world's largest USB Flash Drive today has a 2 terabyte capacity. M-Systems, an Israeli company, developed the USB Flash Drive in 1999. It is colloquially known as a thumb drive, pen drive, jump drive, disk key, disk on key, flash-drive, or a memory stick. Similar to SD cards, USB flash drives use flash memory. USB flash drives became popular as portable storage devices due to the convenience of plugging them into a computer's USB port for data transfer.

Williams-Kilburn Tube 1947 (.128KB)

The first form of random access memory (RAM). The first tubes held 1024 bits, or 128 bytes, which could fit about 128 characters. You'd need at least 72 of them to store a single JPG image file. The Williams-Kilburn Tube, invented in 1947, featured the first fully electronic form of data storage. The device was 16 ½ inches long, 6 inches wide, and stored data by displaying a grid of dots on cathode ray tubes, and sending a static charge through the tubes. While the technology was revolutionary, its use was not long-lived, as superior technology was developed shortly after. It remains practically unknown today.

Compact Disc (CD) 1982 (700,000KB)

The first highly portable optical storage. CDs had a capacity of 650 - 700 MB. That could hold 70,000 formatted .doc files, 140 minutes of low-resolution video, or, more appropriately, your favorite Radiohead album, OK Computer. The Compact Disc was developed in 1982 by both Sony and Phillips. Although the CD was only 12 centimeters in diameter, when first introduced, the CD could hold more data than a personal computer's hard drive. CD drives read the data stored on discs by shining a focused laser beam at the surface of the disc. CDs revolutionized the music industry in the 1980s, eventually replacing the vinyl record and cassette tape. The sale of CDs has been eclipsed by digital music in recent years, but still sell by the tens of millions every year.

Less stress and better work-life balance

The flexibility provided by a remote work setting also brings another benefit: A happier, less stressful day-to-day and a better work-life balance. In a study done by Owl Labs, many workers reported alleviated stress levels with even one day of work outside the office. 86% of respondents in the survey believe that working remotely reduces stress levels and improves health. "I believe it has become much more work life balance. Acceptable to say, I am much more productive from home office and not fear retribution. This makes life much more than work, resulting in happier and more productive employees." In fact, in the same study, Owl Labs found that along increase productivity/better focus and avoiding commutes, a better family/work-life balance was mentioned as one of the top reasons that employees had to work remotely.

Zip Drive 1994 (100,000KB)

The home of the floppy disk. The first Zip Drive could hold about 100 minutes of MP3 audio. That's equal to 20 minutes of low-resolution video or 1/7 of a CD. The original Zip Drive was a medium-to-high-capacity removable floppy disk storage system, introduced by Iomega in late 1994. It launched with capacities of 100 MB, but later versions improved capacity from 250 MB to 750 MB. Some organizations still use Zip Drives today.

Match the tools to the tasks

The more complex the virtual meeting agenda, the more advanced the meeting technology should be. "If your team needs to resolve a conflict or make a decision, for example, video conferencing tools or collaborative software can be your best bet," says DeRosa. IT leaders can keep participants engaged during the meeting by using poll and chat options to solicit feedback on key issues.

virtualization

The process for configuring one single high-end server to operate as if it were several smaller, special purpose servers.

Who Telecommutes?

The short answer: Many, many people telecommute to work. Between the years 2005 and 2017, the number of people telecommuting grew by 159 percent, according to a report from FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics. Per this report, 4.7 million people in the U.S. telecommute, and 3.4% of the country's workforce are remote employees. The reasons for this growth are clear: For office workers, technology (such as Slack, video meetings, and so on) has made working from home easier. For workers with access to WiFi, communications are virtually seamless. Some employees telecommute full-time, while others may work remotely for part of the week and go into the office for the remainder of the week.

XPath

The specification for obtaining related content from an XML document.

application programming interface (API)

The specification of data required for completing a computational process.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) 1956 (3,750KB)

The spin doctor. With 3.75 MB of storage, the first HDDs had enough storage space to hold a whole mp3 file, 45 seconds of low-resolution video, or 5 million characters of text. The HDD, first introduced by IBM in 1956, weighed over a ton and was the size of a refrigerator. The HDD stores data on one or more rapidly rotating magnetic metal platters, or disks. The HDD is still ubiquitous today, with portable models becoming smaller, with higher storage capacity, every year. The solid state drive (SSD), created by Samsung, is only 2½ inches and can hold 16 terabytes of data. It is undoubtedly the highest capacity hard drive on the market today.

Skip the status updates

The vast majority of information sharing or status update meetings are a waste of time for participants, DeRosa says. Employees report they spend more time preparing for a status update call than the time they are on the call. More importantly, 60 percent of managers report they multi-task during status update calls, says DeRosa. "If there is no expectation for interaction among team members to solve a problem or make a decision you should consider using shared sites or email to get people the information the need,"she says.

Benefits of Telecommuting

There are many benefits to telecommuting. Telecommuting gives workers greater freedom over their work hours and work location. It gives the employee more flexibility to balance work and personal obligations, such as school pick-up or caring for an ill family member. Often, working from home can make you more productive because you do not have the distractions of an office space. Reduced commute time can also be beneficial, particularly for employees who would otherwise have to travel for hours to get to an office. Plus, eliminating a commute can often be a savings. There are also many benefits to employers. Allowing workers to telecommute often makes them more productive, which benefits the company. Telecommuters are also likely to be happier in their jobs and are therefore more likely to stay with the company. Telecommuting even saves companies money in office expenses.

Finding a Telecommuting Job

There are steps you can take to finding a telecommuting job. You can look for jobs at companies known for hiring telecommuters or search job sites geared towards telecommuters. There you will be able to find more information on how to find a work-from-home position. One thing to be careful of is job scams. Many scams promise applicants easy money from a work-from-home job, but these are almost always tricks for taking your money or your identity.

Establish methods for delivering urgent and nonurgent messages.

Thomas explains that inside your organization, urgent matters might be tackled with a phone call or in-person visit, whereas more-routine, nonurgent issues might be handled through a team collaboration tool or by e-mail. For her part, Gedda recommends considering e-mail for external communication and Slack or a similar app for internal communication. "Aligning on the rhythm and cadence of internal communications is super important for businesses," said Anthony Kennada, chief marketing officer at Front, which offers a workplace communication platform. "Companies will win when they set clear guidelines on how people communicate with each other."

Cut out report-outs

Too many meetings, virtual and otherwise, are reminiscent of a bunch of fifth graders reading to each other around the table - and that's a waste of the valuable time and opportunity of having people in a room together. The solution is to send out a simple half-page in advance to report on key agenda items - and then only spend time on it in the meeting if people need to ask questions or want to comment. This type of pre-work prepares participants to take full advantage of the meeting by thinking ahead about the content, formulating ideas or getting to know others in the group, which can help keep team members engaged, says business consultant Nancy M. Settle-Murphy in her book Leading Effective Virtual Teams. But one thing is critical: It has to be assumed that everyone has read the pre-read. Not doing so becomes an ethical violation against the team. I use the word "ethical" because it's stealing time from the team — and that's a disrespectful habit. The leader needs to set the tone aggressively that the pre-read should be done in advance.

Exploring Big Data

Twitter has become a source of big data for analysis. Twitter users now send more than 230 million tweets per day, or 46 megabits per second of data. Twitter reported, in the tweet shown in Figure 6-19(a), that during Super Bowl 46 in 2012, the most watched television event in America, over 10,000 tweets per second were transmitted during the last three minutes of the game. Spot, an application from NeoFormix, sifts through all tweets on Twitter related to a search term (in this case, "giants") to fnd words common to all of them. Like other tag clouds, the larger the spot, or circle, the more common that word is in the current conversation on Twitter. Twitter is one source of big data (a) and using Spot to examine Twitter's big data (b).

In each case, username is the

Twitter screen name of the user whose profile, friends or followers you are looking to access. The URL for the users/show method is entered in a Web browser to display the XML-formatted data about Twitter user rhowebber. The Twitter API returns several data values from a user's profile; those values that commonly appear on a Twitter home page are highlighted in Figure 6-21.

Take a poll

Use polling software to gather responses; that way, those who are uncomfortable speaking up still can participate and make themselves heard. It also keeps your audience active and engaged.

Magnetic Tape Drive 1951 (231KB)

Very attractive. A 1200 foot roll of tape held 230 KB of data, about 10 PDFs or 23 formatted .doc files. Invented in Germany in 1928, magnetic tape was first used to store data in 1951 on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC I. Tape drives used motors to wind the magnetic tape from reel to reel, while passing a tape head to read, write, or erase data. More compact versions of this technology were common through the 1980s, like the VHS and cassette tape. Magnetic tape is used less and less for daily backups, but because of its inexpensive nature, it is still used for archiving data today.

Audio or Visual

Video conferencing, as the name suggests, allows people to see each other as well as hear each other. Teleconferencing, on the other hand, only has audio. You can pick one depending on the kind of conference you need to have. Both video conferencing and teleconferencing have their pros and cons.

Test the technology

Virtual meeting leaders often assume everyone knows how to use the meeting technology or that it will work, says Steffey. But those ten-minute technical delays add up. Checking the technology ahead of time is critical to avoid wasting participants' time.

Everybody stores data.

We often take the devices that store our data for granted, as they have become so inexpensive and efficient. But we've come a long way from the early days of computing. Take a look at 14 of the most important devices in the history of data storage.

Software as a Service: Applications in the Cloud

Web 2.0 is characterized by applications with which users interact in the browser. These applications are delivered to customers over the Internet. The Web adds connectivity to many traditionally desktop-hosted applications, often enabling documents to be shared and facilitating collaboration between users. Large companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook rely on the Internet to make their business and consumer applications available to customers. These companies offer Software as a Service (SaaS), which provides Internet-based applications that are typically hosted in a centralized data center and available through a Web browser, as shown in Figure 6-11.

Travelocity is powered by a

Web application that obtains travel information from its own database and calls upon Weather Underground to provide weather information for the user's specified location. Figure 6-17 shows the process that is involved for Travelocity to obtain the Weather Underground weather information. The Travelocity application must invoke the Weather Underground Web service over the Internet through its API. Travelocity's application requests data from Weather Underground by calling its Web service through its API. Travelocity's application specifies the zip code for the desired city. Weather Underground's servers fulfill the request for weather information from Travelocity and return the requested weather information to the Travelocity application as XML-formatted data. Travelocity's Web application processes the data and returns the Web page as HTML containing the weather information for display in the browser.

Examining Data from Web Services

Web applications invoke a company's Web APIs over the Internet to incorporate that company's data. For example, among the capabilities that Twitter provides in its APIs are operations, or methods, to obtain information about a user's friends and followers. Twitter APIs contain methods to search Twitter, obtain user information, and provide statistics on individual tweets. Twitter documents its APIs on a Web site, shown in Figure 6-20, which is available from the API link on the Twitter home page.

mashups

Web applications that combine content from multiple online sources.

Content for mashups often comes from

Web feeds and Web services, both of which structure their data in XML format. Many organizations provide APIs for developers to access their data at no or little cost. The data being mashed—photos, items from RSS feeds, or other items—are often provided as the result of Web feeds or Web services that run on remote servers maintained by the respective providers. Creating mashups usually requires significant Web development experience. The source code to access APIs and Web services is written in a programming language such as Java or C#. The data from the chosen APIs is then "mashed up," or obtained and combined, using mashup application logic. A mashup may access data from several Web servers and multiple content providers before being displayed in a browser so that the user can view or interact with it. For example, SongLyricsBook is a mashup that finds the lyrics for a song and a YouTube video of an artist performing it. Figure 6-46 suggests the flow of data between different components of the SongLyricsBook mashup in order to accomplish this task.

Berners-Lee envisions a

Web where software agents will follow content in order to find useful information for us. Imagine a personal Web agent that can help you make travel arrangements for a business trip to Washington, DC, as shown in Figure 6-52. He said, "The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."

Box

Well-known service with some powerful business options. Supported by many apps, business plans with advanced security, free account file upload limit of 250MB. It's website currently seems to be pushing its Business plans as clicking 'sign up' takes you to the pricing page where for $15 per user (£11, around AU$19) you can benefit from advanced collaboration options and unlimited storage. But there is a 10GB free option, too. As Box has been around for a while, it is supported by a number of mainstream apps such as Google Docs and Office 365. It's also integrated with G-Suite, which means Docs, Sheets and Slides are automatically saved and managed in Box. Additionally, like OneDrive, it's also been integrated with AutoCAD. Box is also integrated with Slack. The Box Sync client is available from the Downloads page for Mac and Windows, plus there's also an official Android client.

Trends in remote work to expect in 2020

What can we look to happen in the short term future? Here are a few remote work trends to watch for: "Biggest change I've seen is that remote work is getting spoken about more, but lots of comments are too dogmatic - when anybody who's been in this long enough knows that needs can vary for each person/company, and change over time. There's no one right way!"

Storing Big Data

When personal computing was centered on creating and storing text documents, a 1.4 MB foppy disk provided ample storage. As digital images, music, and videos became common, individual fle sizes for multimedia increased from kilobytes to megabytes. The foppy disk became obsolete, once users had the ability to carry around gigabytes worth of information at a time on fash drives and storage cards. Hard drives are now built to store from hundreds of gigabytes up to 1 or 2 terabytes of information. As the amount of data people and machines generate continues to grow, there is a need for words to describe the large quantities of bytes needed to store all of this information. Table 6-2 describes units of digital storage, and offers an example of what can be stored at each capacity. The increase in data generated and transmitted over the Internet requires new terms to describe these quantities. The infographic from Mozy.com shown in Figure 6-18 describes how much can be stored in one petabyte. It is predicted that the increase in streaming video over the Internet to computers, televisions, and smartphones will bring about the "zettabyte era" within the next decade.

Be an active facilitator

When verbally interacting with virtual participants, use their name to address them. "This not only pulls that participant more into the meeting but identifies that participant to others and serves as a direct reminder to all that the named participant is actively engaged," says Steffey. Actively leading the meeting - paraphrasing comments, calling on people, periodically referring to the agenda noting what's been accomplished so far and what remains to be addressed - creates a more dynamic virtual meeting, says Axelrod. "When posing a question to the group, don't be afraid to call on people," he adds "The surprise element keeps people motivated and alert."

Information Sharing

Whether you have in-house staff or a team spread across a distance, the cloud makes sharing data effortlessly. Once you have your data backed up, sharing files can be as easy as sending a link, eliminating the cumbersome process of emailing large files.

Telecommuting provides a better future for work

With a quarter of all employed Americans working from home, telecommuting has moved beyond being just another Millennial trend. It's become a way of life, disrupting the traditional workplace as we know it with employees who are happier and more productive. Time to consider these benefits. Share the data and ask your current employer about the possibilities of telecommuting with the positive impact that works in favor of both the business and the worker. If you own your own business, depending on the roles and industry you are in, it may be beneficial to consider the telecommuting structure for your workforce.

Keeping older generations in the workforce

With life expectancy increasing and the cost of living exploding, people over the age of 64 have inadequate savings. As a result, many in this age group choose to delay retirement while others prefer to work into their 70's to keep their minds engaged while continuously learning. With 74% of older Americans wanting work flexibility, telecommuting presents this generation with an ideal way to make ends meet without a hectic daily commute. It also gives them the opportunity to attend health checkups without it interfering with their work schedule.

A Computational Knowledge Engine: Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfratrying to do is take all the things that can be computed about the worldm|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine that tries to understand user questions and calculate their answers. User questions may be in the form of keywords, mathematical expressions, or categories. Wolfram|Alpha's knowledge base is composed of verified data from public Web sites, such as the United States Census Bureau for population and demographics information. Computations are derived from Mathematica, a software platform for performing mathematical modeling, and upon which Wolfram|Alpha is built. Results are generated by analyzing data, performing mathematical computations, and analyzing how search terms are used in context. Rather than presenting results as hyperlinks to existing Web pages, Wolfram|Alpha presents its results as statistics, tables, facts, mathematical formulas, charts, graphs, or other visualizations. Figure 6-54 shows sample computations from Wolfram|Alpha. Examples of Wolfram|Alpha computational results: mathematical calculations (a), travel distances (b), and historical gas prices (c).

Distractions

Working from home is an appealing idea to many employed Americans, particularly those who wish to spend more time near their families or with other home-related responsibilities. At the very least, working from the comfort of home is a great motivator for telecommuting. On the other hand, with the comforts of home come the many distractions: noisy neighborhood traffic; children, spouses, or roommates milling about the house; the ringing of the doorbell and phone, needy pets, and of course, the ever-present lure of the kitchen snack-closet. Distractions lurk around every corner and during every conference call. One solution is to create a defined workspace or home office, including a desk, chair, computer, and all of the necessary accessories to complete a job, ideally a separate room with a door to close. This reduces the need to wander away from the laptop into distraction zones like the kitchen or bedroom to retrieve certain items. Additionally, this space can be officially reserved for work, which will help create boundaries between you and any other individual in the house who may disturb you if you were otherwise sitting on the living room couch.

New York City Councilman Rafael Espinal wants

a law passed for employees to unplug, and how you can set boundaries in the meantime

Benefits of remote work

Working remotely has been seen to have a lot of advantages not only to employees but also to the companies employing them and the environment at large. For employees: Remote workers are more productive compared to office workers Productivity studies have revealed that working from home has helped employees to get more out of their workday. A study done by Stanford showed that remote workers were about 13% more productive than their traditional office colleagues. Moreover, remote workers took fewer days off on sick leave. Since the majority of the remote workers choose their work schedule, they can organize their work to fit their most productive times and hence produce more quality work. "Remote is where my new ideas meet life thanks to focus and concentration. Productivity, relax and no stress are the main advantages. On remote I'm more able to switch between different topics and handle it well." These statistics also go deeper than just work. Remote employees have reported feeling more productive when working from home in comparison to working in an office, the report by FlexJobs shows. Only a meager 3% felt less productive off the office, while about 32% felt just the same. Fewer distractions and less stress were among the reasons cited for more productivity when working from home.

The ImportXML function displays

XML data within a Google spreadsheet. The function requires a URL of the XML feed and the XPath for the requested data. Google Spreadsheets can use the ImportXML function to obtain the list of Twitter user rhowebber's friends by specifying the URL for the statuses/friends method of the Twitter API with the XPath /users/user/screen_name. As shown in Figure 6-38(a),the formula =ImportXML("http://twitter.com/statuses/friends.xml?screen_name=rhowebber", "/users/user/screen_name") in cell A3 collects all of the screen names of rhowebber's friends into a list and displays them in a column below the cell. A similar formula using the statuses/followers method of the Twitter API displays all of rhowebber's followers). Friend or Follow, shown in Figure 6-38(b), is a Twitter application that calls on the same Twitter API methods to display a user's friends and followers in the browser. The spreadsheet application displays the screen names of your friends and followers in two adjacent columns of a Google spreadsheet. Friend or Follow adds application logic to determine your following (people you follow who are not following you), your fans (people who follow you that you are not following), and your friends (people you follow who also follow you). Though Friend or Follow has a much more visually appealing display, including the profile images for each friend or follower, both the Google Spreadsheet version and Friend or Follow use the same methods from the Twitter API.

Applications make use of

XPath information to extract similar data items from an XML document into a list. For Twitter user rhowebber, given the XML information provided by the statuses/friends API, the XPath /users/user/screen_name specifies a list of screen names beginning with bobconselli and PavlikM, as shown in Figure 6-25. After obtaining data from an XML document by specifying an XPath expression, a software application can process each item in the list. An XPath provides a way to extract items from an XML document and import them into a list.

Tell friends and family

You may be home rather than in an office, but you're still working. Be sure that friends and family understand that you are not free for unexpected meals or favors even though you may be at home.

Have a dedicated workspace

You may find that a nearby co-working space is helpful. Or you may opt to convert your spare bedroom into a workspace. Generally, it's best to avoid working on the couch or a comfy chair that you also sit in to watch TV. (It can make it a bit too tempting to turn on the TV and avoid work.) If you're on a lot of video meetings, you'll want to make sure your background looks somewhat professional.

Asking Your Employer About Telecommuting

You should come up with a strategic plan if you want to ask your employer if you can telecommute. First, decide what kind of schedule you have in mind. (Do you want to work from home full-time? Come into the office part-time?) Then, be sure you can explain how your telecommuting would benefit the company. (Would it save the company money? Would you be able to increase productivity?) If you are making the case for telecommuting, it's often helpful to frame it in terms of benefits to the employer. Plus, provide information on how you'll communicate with your colleagues.

Cloud Data Storage 2006 (unlimited KB)

Your data in the ether. Now, your storage capacity depends only on the plan you can pay for. The options are endless. The first all web-based data storage system was PersonaLink Services, launched by AT&T in 1994. Amazon Web Services launched AWS S3 in 2006, in part starting the trend toward massive cloud data storage. With cloud storage, remote databases are used to store information, made accessible at any time via internet access. As cloud technologies improve, cloud storage will become less and less expensive.

Proofread every message

Your mistakes won't go unnoticed by the recipients of your email. "And, depending upon the recipient, you may be judged for making them,"Pachter says. Don't rely on spell-checkers. Read and re-read your email a few times, preferably aloud, before sending it off. "One supervisor intended to write 'Sorry for the inconvenience,'" Pachter says. "But he relied on his spell-check and ended up writing 'Sorry for the incontinence.'"

Effectiveness and support

Zoom video conferencing technology also makes sharing presentations, data and reports easier through features like screen sharing and interactive whiteboards along with other collaboration tools while being on the video call. This makes it much easier for people to be on the same page, figuratively and literally. In teleconferencing, you have to be a little more old-fashioned with a separate device or a paper file with the information in front of you. While both types of virtual business meetings are effective, video conferences allow you to have visual support for your information in a more convenient manner. If you can have everything in the one solution for all communications then it will be easier to support, easier to manage and easier for user to use. adoption is critical to success of rolling out a system which works every time.

Turn off email notifications

and ask colleagues not to cc you on routine matters. The ILM also advises that you consider not checking work email at all during time-off. "If someone needs you urgently, they'll call you," says the ILM report.

Use email auto responders

and your voice mail greeting to let people know you're OOO. Remember, the value of technology depends on how you use it. Most email clients and phone systems make it really easy to set-up auto-reply and out-of-office greetings.

As Internet access becomes ubiquitous and

applications continue to shift from the desktop to the Web, Cloud computing suggests that it is more cost-effective to place computational and storage needs on a centralized system and provide users access to those systems with small, inexpensive devices like netbooks, smartphones, and even video game systems. Figure 6-3 summarizes several features of Cloud computing that are discussed in this section.

Automated sensors also provide

big data. Every day, sensors at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) record data that is used in researching climate, the environment, and the weather. Figure 6-20, shows a visualization of data from NOAA's Gulf of Mexico Data Atlas, displaying information about populations of brown shrimp that live in the Gulf of Mexico. Greater populations of brown shrimp in the Gulf are indicated by darker colors on the map. The visualization also includes related information about brown shrimp that is linked from the Gulf of Mexico Data Atlas Web site. The NOAA Gulf of Mexico Data Atlas is a tool for exploring big environmental data.

​In a December 2019 report, Forrester Research Inc. laid out a

bold proposal for an "employee experience" bill of rights. One of the proposal's tenets: Enable workers to boost their productivity by focusing on vital tasks and temporarily disregarding digital distractions like e-mail, instant messages and Slack messages. "Employees' ability to ignore distractions and get work done is the difference between productive, engaged employees and frustrated, fearful ones," the Forrester report states. According to the report, electronic interruptions—a question on Slack about an invoice or an e-mailed request to schedule a meeting, for example—create a considerable cost. For every e-mail an employee opens, he or she spends 64 seconds trying to resume the task that the e-mail disrupted. These interruptions happen an average of 84 times a day, causing 1 1/2 hours of lost productivity.

Each virtual server may support a particular

business function such as deploying Web pages and applications, storing files, hosting e-mail applications or blogs, and storing internal corporate data. Virtual servers may also be used as a sandbox, or testing environment, for developing or evaluating new Web applications. By using a virtual server as a sandbox, it is possible to test an application or configuration change before deploying it, without impacting previously installed software on existing servers. Although each virtual server appears to be an actual server, in reality it is a server that has been emulated using software tools. Virtual Server management software allows system administrators to create and configure new virtual servers as if they were actual physical servers located on site. Virtual servers are administered remotely using virtual server management software such as Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, shown in Figure 6-7.

Overcome FOMO

by making sure that colleagues and clients know when you're going to be taking time-off. If you really can't allow yourself to unplug, at least try not to get caught-up in work. "Some people may find the stress of being disconnected from work while they're on holiday is actually more stressful than keeping an eye on what's going on," says Kate Cooper, the ILM's head of research, policy and standards. The bottom line is to find a balance that works for you.

The cloud refers to a

centralized location on the internet that stores data, making it accessible anytime, anywhere, from any connected device. Businesses—both large and small—have embraced the cloud because it has a number of benefits. Financial institutions and banks also use cloud services as the reach and serve an evermore global customer base. The cloud-based business allows workers and customers to interact on a regular basis, even if they are on opposite sides of the globe.

Similar to a 2017 French law requiring

companies with over 50 employees to set guidelines on how to deal with after-hours communications, the proposal is a step in the right direction for everyone who feels pressured to check Slack or email while cooking dinner. Under the proposed law, employees who feel they're being retaliated against for refusing to work after-hours would be able to file a complaint with the city. If found in violation of the law, employers could face stiff penalties ranging from a $250 fine to having to pay out full compensation plus $2,500 to a worker who was fired as a result. Certain industry sectors would be exempt from the law, including government employees, on-call staff like doctors and nurses, and companies with overseas business that requires employees to work at odd hours. While there's no doubt that the intent behind the law is a good one, the fact that one of the exemptions allows any company to define a situation that must be dealt with "immediately" raises some questions regarding the effectiveness of a blanket bureaucratic fix to the problem of never-ending work.

Creating, managing, and consuming large amounts of

data has implications for individuals, governments, and businesses. Open data offers a sense of transparency in governmental or organizational processes; linked data allows organizations and individuals to fnd connections that may bring about new knowledge; and big data brings privacy concerns, technology challenges, and research opportunities. Each of these requires a technology infrastructure that can support producing, consuming, and analyzing vast quantities of information originating from machine sensors, computer logs, and human activities online.

cloud computing

describes how applications are stored and deployed on a network of Internet servers. The Cloud represents the Internet, as its frequent use in many computer network diagrams often suggests. Users of a Cloud computing service interact with and manage data and applications stored on servers located in a remote data center accessible via the Internet. Cloud computing service providers offer server space and processing on an as-needed, on-demand basis. Computing resources may be allocated dynamically as applications require additional bandwidth or processing power. Customers pay as they go for the computing storage and resources that they actually use in a given period of time. Rather than storing data or installing applications on a user's own computer or on a company's own server, data is stored and applications are run on servers operated by companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce. From the user's perspective, as shown in Figure 6-2, the location of the application and the data that it accesses are not important. The fact that they are available in the Cloud is what matters.

Remote work is also an increasingly

desirable trait an employer can offer, with 57% of the workforce saying that the option to work remotely is their most preferable employment perk. "I finally tell clients I closed my office 5 years ago, and have not been disappointed. I used to feel like I was cheating people, but what I noticed is when I worked at agencies, we never got anything done. Actually my crew is in 4 different locations globally. We've been able to do global/national/local work just fine. As a matter of fact, I've saved $$$ a month on rent alone!" Acceptance of remote work has been also seen among consulting companies and freelance professionals working with clients, which could have been perceived as something negative by their clients in the past, has become now seen as "normal". "Acceptance has definitely increased. Clients have no issues with our team being fully remote, if anything we get to have more face time with them because of it, so build a much stronger working relationship."

The city of Chicago's MetroPulse Web site was

developed for measuring quality of life in Chicago. MetroPulse gathers data about people and organizations in Chicago from a number of public sources, and provides online tools that allow users to visualize its data. MetroPulse includes data on topics from the economy to information about land use, safety, and health issues. Figure 6-3, shows graduation rates from four-year institutions in the Chicago area overlaying a map of the county, with data supplied from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Education, and the Illinois State Education Data Center. This data visualization, called a heat map, uses color to communicate intensity. In Figure 6-3, darker shades of blue represent counties with higher graduation rates. MetroPulse displays a heat map about graduation rates in Chicago. The United States Government has made data collected from various agencies available to the public since 2009, as shown in Figure 6-4. This data is provided in formats that are readable by machines as well as through Web-based applications that allow users to interact with the data.

Instead of sending a file in an

e-mail message to several people to edit and then merging the results or exchanging different versions of a report with teammates or coworkers, Google Docs always makes the most recent version of a document, presentation, or spreadsheet available to those with whom it is shared. After deciding to share a document with other users, Google Docs displays a dialog box where you can enter the e-mail addresses of users with whom you want to share the document. You can allow your collaborators to edit the document or only view it. You can enter a subject and a short message, and then the Google Docs application will send the invitations via an e-mail message. The name of the shared document, spreadsheet, or presentation will appear on the Google Docs desktop the next time the invited users log in. For real-time collaboration, Google Spreadsheets provides a built-in chat window in which users may chat about a document as they edit it at the same time, as shown in Figure 6-28.

The XML tags describe

each of the items in a user's profile. Each <user> tag contains information about that user, including the user's name, screen name, and friends count. A <status> tag contains information about the user's most recent tweet, including its text and the time that it was created. Figure 6-22 displays the structure of the XML tags that the Twitter API uses to describe a user. As in the XML structure diagrams in Chapter 3, the blue tags contain other tags, and the green tags contain actual data values. In addition to the user's Twitter ID, name, and screen name, the API users/show method provides information about the number of friends, followers, and tweets (shown by the <statuses_count> tag) that a user has and the user's most recent tweet. Among the information stored with each tweet is the time and date that it was created, the text of the tweet, and the application that was used to post it on Twitter (shown by the <source> tag). Twitter uses the users/show method to display this information on a user's profile page, as shown in Figure 6-23.

At this point, constant

email and Slack are just a symptom of a broader societal inability to unplug. According to USA Today, 63 percent of those surveyed by the Workforce Institute "said they would still work after hours even if it violated company policy." So, it's unclear exactly how many people would take advantage of a law like this, and even if they weren't responding to email specifically, that wouldn't necessarily prevent them from working after they clock out. And while the law might prevent retaliation, in a culture that praises workaholism, it wouldn't prevent the crippling fear that being unwilling to be available at all hours will ultimately prevent you from getting ahead.

The bureaucratic minefield that

employees would have to go through to report their employer also seems like a deterrent—although there's an argument to be made that having a theoretically neutral governmental mediator might be more effective than a solution like France's, where individual companies are required to implement their own policies, leaving the enforcement entirely up to individual HR departments. There are also plenty of industries besides international business and medicine where not responding to communications after 6 p.m. isn't workable, including journalism. Of course, our collective inability to take our eyes off Slack doesn't mean that employers should just throw their hands up in the air and resign themselves to their employees continually clocking uncompensated overtime. Espinal's proposed law is a positive bellwether of a broader societal shift that needs to happen, one that clearly delineates boundaries between work and home.

Just as Web 2.0 is the name given to an

evolving Web that linked people in new ways, Web 3.0 is the name that is being used to describe emerging trends that allow people and machines to link information in new ways. Web 3.0 proposes a Web where both people and ideas are connected with each other and where personal Web assistants, called agents, can make decisions and take actions based on a user's preferences and past behaviors. Web 3.0 suggests that meaning can be added to information and relationships. Figure 6-50 displays the evolution of the Web, from the simple consumption of content in the early Web, to the person-to-person connections of Web 2.0, to the possibility of a decision-making Web with Web 3.0. There is a lot of speculation about just what is possible in a Web 3.0 world. Figure 6-51 shows a sampling of results of several Twitter searches for tweets about Web 3.0.

Email is an

extremely useful communication tool in business. Less intrusive than a phone call, email is convenient and fast. It empowers entrepreneurs to run their businesses from just about anywhere. You can communicate with clients and customers, check in with employees and set up important meetings from your office or on the go. But when used inappropriately, email can hinder productivity. More than one-quarter of a worker's day on average is spent answering and reading emails, according to research released in 2012 by the McKinsey Global Institute. Its survey found that email is the second-most time-consuming activity for workers, next to "role-specific tasks." Business leaders, CEOs and managers often receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails a day. Reading and responding to every message can become a drain on time and energy. A cluttered email inbox -- filled with old, unopened or unimportant messages -- will not only frustrate you. It will prevent you from maximizing your time and distract you from other obligations.

You might ask your personal Web agent to

find the least expensive airline ticket available between Boston and Washington that departs on October 3 in the morning and returns on October 10 in the afternoon, book the trip, and add it to your calendar. The flight information, your bank information, and your calendar are already stored in the Cloud. All that is necessary to make this a reality is intelligent software that can determine which Web services to access to book travel, charge your credit card, update your calendar, and put these pieces together. As you continue to use the Web, your personal Web agent would learn more about your behaviors, preferences, and activities. As Web 3.0 develops, your personal Web agent may already know that you live in Boston, and based on your pattern of previous flights, may know that you like morning flights and aisle seats. For example, when you receive notification of the business trip, your personal Web agent could begin to search for flights so that when a low fare is offered or a cut-off date approaches, it can make the necessary arrangements on your behalf. All of this may be possible in a Web 3.0 world. Text-based search engines, such as Google, use a set of algorithms to find relevant pages on the Web that match the terms that you enter. When you search for "Washington," Google does not understand that you are looking for information about Washington, DC, and not the state, the president, or the university, all of whose entries may show up in the search results. The results from a text-based search engine will match your terms, but not discern your meaning. The next wave of search engines will try to add meaning to your search requests and then present the results in ways that go beyond a simple list of hyperlinks to other Web pages. Microsoft Bing, Wolfram|Alpha, and Google Squared are three examples of the next wave of search tools: a semantic search engine, a computation knowledge engine, and structured search. Each of these applications brings closer the Web 3.0 ideal of a system that anticipates and provides results for user queries, and is able to make connections between information from different sources, media types, or Web sites.

Espinal says that

for now, workers should try to create some space between work and life. "It comes down to a conversation with their employer about the boundary or the expectations, especially when you're negotiating a contract or starting a new job. We're trying to accomplish a way that workers have the right to have that conversation without fear of losing their jobs," Espinal said. And for those struggling with work-life balance in the day-to-day, before you find yourself about to fire off a response to an email, career experts urge you to ask yourself "is this urgent?" "Ask yourself, 'does this need to be resolved right this minute, or can it wait?'" Monster.com career expert Vicki Salemi advised. "It's about prioritizing your work, rather than reacting to every email that feels urgent. Think, 'what is truly an emergency in the scope of my current job?' from there you can determine what needs action.

Espinal said the bill doesn't

forbid employers from contacting workers after they clock out, it just protects them from not having to be on call or feel like their job is at risk if they don't respond. His legislation is based off of a similar law that was passed in France in 2017. French employees are able to legally ignore work-related emails after office hours, which must be clearly outlined by their respective employers. It's unclear when and if Espinal's bill will pass, but he hopes to have an outcome decided before the end of the year. Without it, he says, workers' mental health is at risk. "The cell phone has turned the five day work week into the eight day work week. No one is taking into account the effect it has on mental health. If workers have the right to disconnect they're going to produce a lot more."

Under the proposed law, employers would be required to

have written policies stating normal work hours for each employee, and give them the right to disconnect from all things work-related outside of those hours. Some workers, of course, will be exempt from this including those who must be on call 24 hours, people in work study programs and employees who are compensated through scholarships. Employers who fail to comply would be fined at least $250 per incidence.

Even though one physical server may

host several virtual servers for different Web sites or applications, each owner of a virtual server has full control over it. Unlike a physical server, where storage, memory, and processing capabilities are limited by installed hardware, these capabilities may be reconfigured dynamically on a virtual server.

SpotCrime uses various icons to

identify the type of crime. Hovering over a crime displays additional details about the crime. Because the crime data is pulled in from live databases on the Web, each time you visit the site the map will be updated to show the latest information about local crime incidents. Wordle is a mashup application that creates a word cloud based on the frequency of words in a specified text. In a word cloud, the more times that a word appears, the larger it will appear in the diagram. Figure 6-48 displays a Wordle based on the text of all six chapters of this book.

Also, as more of the workforce moves online,

improvements in cyber-security systems, as well as protocols within organizations and development of new, better protection focused on remote working organizations, can be also expected. Additionally, there will be a more important rise of services targeted to digital nomads and remote working professionals that travel often, such as cheap, pre-paid sim cards or e-sims or mobile hotspots to be able to have a reliable and fast internet connection anywhere in the world, besides the already visible trend of more coffee shops, airports, etc. offering services to easily work on the go. "In the past year, our distributed marketing org (half remote, half in global offices) has made an attempt to use web cams more. Before, practically no one used webcams. Now its about half, and much improved relationships and empathy w/ those that participate regularly."

The Twitter API Documentation contains

information about the different methods that Twitter makes available through their APIs for software developers to incorporate in their own applications. These include methods to search Twitter, obtain information about trending topics, and see information about a user, a user's friends, and followers. (Although the Twitter Web site refers to the people who you follow as your following, in the Twitter API, the people who you follow are known as your friends.) Each method shown in the Twitter API Documentation queries a Twitter database to obtain the desired information and then provides it in XML format. You can view the XML-formatted data from some of these methods by entering the URL of the method in your browser. The following URLs, obtained from the Twitter API Documentation, retrieve information about a user's profile, friends, and followers.

Similarly, Open Library, an

initiative of the Internet Archive, hosts over a million books for users to download or read online. Open Library allows users to search through its collection of books by author or title, and then search within that book for keywords or phrases. Figure 6-2 shows the results after a user searches Open Library for books by Shakespeare, and then searches within the book Macbeth to fnd all occurrences of the word dagger. Open Library offers a collection of digital books for users to read and search.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

is the delivery of a computing platform over the Internet. Developers can create and deploy large-scale business Web applications using development tools that are hosted within the Cloud. PaaS provides the tools for storing, running, and monitoring the performance of social networking, business, and computing applications over the Internet.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

is the delivery of a networked computing infrastructure over the Internet. This infrastructure includes high-end servers with increased storage and processing power, Internet connectivity, a secure environment for housing equipment, and online tools to remotely manage and monitor performance. IaaS provides infrastructure for storing files in the Cloud so that users can access them from anywhere and for managing virtual servers using software tools.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

is the delivery of software applications over the Internet. Software applications are stored and deployed from servers on the Internet. SaaS provides the ability for business applications such as Salesforce Social CRM, discussed in Chapter 5 and consumer applications such as Google Docs, an online office suite for collaboratively creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, to run over the Internet.

Virtual meetings pose an especially difficult challenge when

it comes to etiquette. Here are some guidelines. Your virtual attendees no doubt will have their smartphones, laptops, and tablets at hand during your videoconference, making it incredibly difficult to hold their attention on the meeting's purpose and goals. Here are a few rules of modern etiquette that should be observed when hosting videoconferences or other virtual meetings.

Employees who clock out won't

legally be responsible for answering work emails if this bill becomes law. The first legal hearing for the "right-to-disconnect" bill, introduced by New York City Councilman Rafael Espinal (D-Brooklyn) last March, was held Thursday, aiming to make it unlawful for private companies to require staff to respond to email and other electronic correspondence once they're off the clock. "There is no line in the sand that separates the normal work hours from personal time because of technology," Espinal told Moneyish following the City Council hearing Thursday morning. "We live with an always-on mentality because we believe that that's what's expected from us from our job. That can lead to exploitation of workers. Technology has aggressively advanced over the past 15 years with email and smartphone, but regulations and laws haven't caught up with it."

Individuals, organizations, and government agencies are

making vast quantities of data available online for users to analyze and for developers to incorporate when creating new applications. The ability to access and share online information without copyright restriction is known as open data. Linked data involves storing and representing data in formats that allow for creating relationships between related information from different data sources. Big data requires new technologies and tools to effciently store and process large amounts of information.

The G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operating System) virtual computer includes

many features found in a physical computer, including a desktop, file storage, and applications. The files and applications are stored in the Cloud. A G.ho.st desktop integrates Cloud storage for documents and files, ZohoWriter and other productivity tools, a Web browser, and a file manager. There is no need to install software or transfer files. Whenever you log in to G.ho.st, your files and applications are always available.

SolarBoston is a

mashup of data that displays locations of solar panels.

Schmap is a

mashup that combines Flickr photos with travel information. Schmap relies on the fact that Flickr has a large number of users who both regularly post, tag, and geotag photos from around the world and set Creative Commons licenses that give permission for their photos to be reused. Schmap uses the Flickr API to search for photos to include in their virtual travel guide. Schmap also provides a mobile application so that users may easily access the site on their cell phones.

SongLyricsBook is a

mashup that combines data from LyricsFly, YouTube, and Bing APIs. This mashup makes use of APIs from Bing, Microsoft's search engine; LyricsFly, a database of song lyrics; and YouTube, the online video service. The user's input (a song and an artist) is sent to each of the three APIs, which then search for matching Web content. Each API produces the XML-formatted data that SongLyricsBook mashup logic processes and combines to display the song lyrics next to a video of the artist performing the song. Another mashup, SpotCrime, displays the locations of criminal incident reports on a Google Map to illustrate where crime takes place in a neighborhood, as shown in Figure 6-47.

Remote work has been on a

meteoric rise over the past decade, a trend that doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Although many companies are still yet to fully embrace it, more are expected to hop on the train in 2020. It is, therefore, a good idea for companies to look for ways to integrate remote work into their systems, identifying the best way to benefit from hiring remotely, while avoiding the most common challenges from the start. For employees looking to work remotely, a quick study into niches that are on high demand can help, as well as using remote focused job boards like the Remoters one, that along a few others and following tips to better highlight "remote friendly" skills in the resume. As the workplace and the society adapts to more flexible work arrangements, it is undebatable that remote work is here to stay and offers plenty of benefits for the workers, the employers, and society as a whole, while has challenges that can be minimized with relevant and timely team management.

Video Conferencing and Teleconferencing are two

models of virtual meetings, which have become quite popular in the past few years. This is because they allow people to communicate and work with each other without being present in the same room. Web conferencing software like Zoom has simplified things further as they have reduced the cost of communication to practically nothing.

A distributed application architecture, sometimes called

multi-tiered application architecture, adds a services tier to the three-tiered architecture diagram, so that servers running Web applications may invoke Web services running on remote servers over the Internet automatically. A model of distributed application architecture is shown in Figure 6-19.

Most casual users do not have a

need to view this XML data. Rather, a Web application requests user data from Twitter by calling one of its API methods over the Internet. The application then extracts the values that it needs from the XML. Applications process XML-formatted data by navigating its XML tags in order to create lists of similarly described items. An XPath (short for XML Path) is a list of tags, each separated by a forward slash (/), that describe how to locate specific data items in an XML document. An XPath always begins with the topmost tag in the document and lists all subsequent tags in the hierarchy until the required data items are reached. For example, the XPath that collects the screen names of all Twitter users from the statuses/friends method is /users/user/ screen_name. The XPath is highlighted by the bold outlined tags in the XML structure diagram shown in Figure 6-24.

Web services offer specific information, such as

news and sports headlines, stock quotes, and weather forecasts. Other Web services provide transactional services, such as credit card processing, tracking United Parcel Service (UPS) or FedEx packages, and plotting locations on Google Maps. Social networking sites such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook provide Web services so that developers can build applications that make use of their data. Unlike Web applications, Web services do not have a user interface. Like RSS feeds, they provide XML-formatted data to other applications.

Have you ever run a virtual meeting — over the phone or by video — and felt like

no one was on the other end of the line? Have you ever asked a question in that situation and been met with what feels like an ocean of silence? Sure, we all have. It's hard enough to maintain someone's attention when you are in the same room -- when we're connected only by phone or computer, the hurdles to capturing attention are even higher. So, how do you make sure that other people are listening and engaged when you are in charge of a virtual meeting? In some ways, the same basic principles of persuasive communication apply. Hone your message to a strong, direct statement. Know your audience: what you need them to know and what they want to know. Make sure the information you present to them is easy to follow and that you emphasize your key points. But delivering these over the phone or video has its own unique challenges and its own unique solutions. The following techniques can help you grab your audience's attention, keep them engaged and pull them back when they get distracted (and they will).

The Open Knowledge Foundation, a

not-for-proft organization that promotes knowledge and access of online content, describes open data as content that is free and open to access, redistribute, and reuse, without restriction. The Open Knowledge Foundation operates the Data Hub, a community-organized catalog of useful open data sets that are available online. Data must be provided in standard formats that facilitate its reuse in new applications. Open data providers include user-generated databases, local and national government agencies, and online libraries that make digital books available to their readers. In contrast, proprietary data is generated and owned by companies and organizations that may charge to access or reuse their data. Web sites that offer online data often include online tools with which users can examine and analyze the data.

Creating a map mashup

of hospital data. Other options for viewing this data include using the Filter option to narrow the data using one or more conditions. Figure 6-7(a) shows the flter conditions necessary to fnd hospitals in New York that do not have emergency services. Users can also comment on the data, print, or save it, or embed the data set on their blogs or Web sites, as shown in Figure 6-7 (b) and (c).Additional options include fltering (a), commenting on (b), and embedding (c) the data set. Software and Web developers can use this data in customized applications because Data.gov offers an application programming interface (API) that allows applications to access the data. Through open data and provided APIs, developers can create Web or smartphone applications to view hospital ratings, track government spending, or as shown in Figure 6-8, create a mashup to see how solar energy is used in your home town.

Whereas Web 2.0 was about

participation, as one tweet suggests, Web 3.0 is about anticipation. Many describe Web 3.0 as the rise of the Semantic Web, where intelligent software tools can read Web pages and discern useful information from them, much as people do, in order to anticipate a user's needs and to perform tasks on a user's behalf. Semantics, or the study of meaning, involves developing ways to represent knowledge and information. Semantic-based software applications analyze meaning to create new knowledge and draw useful conclusions from it. Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web, coined the term Semantic Web.

Google provides detailed

online documentation about how each of these functions works. You can find the online documentation, shown in Figure 6-33, by searching for the name of the function, GoogleLookup, followed by the word documentation in your favorite search engine. GoogleLookup is a Google Spreadsheet function that searches the Web for information about a particular item. It requires two arguments: the item that you are looking for information about, such as the Amazon River or Paris, and the type of information that you would like Google to find, such its as length or population. Like all spreadsheet formulas, a formula to invoke GoogleLookup must begin with an equal sign (=) followed by the name of the function and its arguments. GoogleLookup will find the desired information by searching the Web and place the results in a cell of the Google spreadsheet. GoogleLookup can find information about a variety of items, as indicated in the online documentation. For example, to look up the length of the Amazon river, you could enter the formula =GoogleLookup("Amazon River", "length") in a cell of the spreadsheet, as shown in Figure 6-34.

Users may upload, create, and store documents

online to facilitate sharing with others. Each application offers many of the same tools that you would find in the equivalent desktop word processing and spreadsheet applications. Whereas applications like Microsoft Office require substantial disk space and processing power for editing and storing a user's documents, their online counterparts only require the processing power needed to run a Web browser. For consumers, this dramatically reduces the requirements of a client computer connected to the Cloud. Many netbook systems are capable of Cloud computing and can be acquired for a fraction of the cost of business-class laptops. Sumo Paint provides photo-editing software capabilities within a Web browser that are comparable to those found in desktop applications. Because Sumo Paint resides on the Web, users can choose to upload a photo from a personal computer or to import a photo stored on the Web by providing its URL. Users may save photos to their Sumo Paint accounts in order to share them with friends. In Figure 6-14, a photo stored on Flickr is opened in Sumo Paint for editing.

Data.gov shares

open data from US Government agencies. Open data has expanded both globally and locally. Individual states have also created their own open data Web sites. Figure 6-5 shows several open data government Web sites from individual cities and states, as well as from countries around the world.

Beyond products and services, remote based professionals and

organizations who have already developed experienced working remotely as well as managing remote teams will also share their insights even further, with more guides, handbooks, and references that will also facilitate the transition of those who are just starting. For example, Matthew-Barby from Hubspot just published The Remote Leader's Guide to Managing a Team, sharing about what he has found to be useful in his own journey leading a remote team, as Andreas Klinger did in the past with his "Managing Remote Teams - A crash course". Companies like Zapier, Trello, InVision or HotJar that work remotely, have also shared their own guidelines and manuals in the past.

In distributed application architecture, the

presentation tier continues to handle the display of information to the user. The middle tier, or business logic tier, handles the interchange of information, and the database tier provides data from associated databases. The services tier represents Web services residing in the Cloud that an application may access over the Internet. In a distributed application architecture, a Web application and its processing are often distributed among many different devices and servers all connected by the Internet. An application that makes use of Web services is said to have a service-oriented architecture (SOA). An advantage of using Web services to build complex applications is that the applications calling Web services do not need to know anything about how the services work. They just need to know what information each service requires as input and in what format the results will be returned as output. This approach allows the applications to concentrate on their core business logic without having to create or manage content that can be obtained from third-party providers.

The bill prohibits

private companies with more than 10 employees from expecting workers to respond to electronic communications -- like emails or text messages -- for work after hours with the exception of overtime or in cases of emergency. Espinal says he proposed the bill to alleviate the pressure workers feel to be responsive after the work day, and prevent them from working unpaid overtime. The bill has been met with criticism from business leaders and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration, saying it would be too difficult to track and enforce. Despite pushback following Thursday's hearing, Espinal says he's received an influx of support. "I have received emails and messages from workers across the country. I've heard from folks in Ohio and on the West Coast who are happy that we're sparking this debate because they have felt that there's been instances where they felt pressure to continue working or they'll lose their jobs," Espinal said.

Online Video Conferencing and Teleconferencing are

quite different from each other on multiple levels. Though both are ultimately used for online business meeting, these differences give one an edge over the other, though both have their plus points.

Open data gives people access to

real data about their community, their world, or their interests. Like Wikipedia, users can add to or update the content of many open data sources. Many open data providers offer APIs for developers to create applications using the data. MusicBrainz is a volunteer-maintained, online music encyclopedia containing information about all kinds of music. MusicBrainz stores album and song titles, length of tracks, and information about artists and their recordings. Figure 6-1 shows the process of searching for data about recordings by Mick Jagger on MusicBrainz. First, the user enters Mick Jagger in the search box on the MusicBrainz home page (a). MusicBrainz returns all matching pages in its database (b). The user selects the frst page which has the highest score for the search term to see information about Mick Jagger's albums and singles on MusicBrainz (c). Like Wikipedia, registered MusicBrainz users may log in to add or correct its content, by entering information about artists, songs, albums, tracks, and labels. MusicBrainz also offers a downloadable application called Picard with which users may categorize their music using information from MusicBrainz. From the MusicBrainz home page, users can search the database for information about artists (a), examine search results (b), and read about artists and their recordings (c).

Digital information may be

represented and stored in a variety of formats that can be easily read and interpreted by both humans and computer programs, and can be integrated into new software applications. Standard data formats include CSV (comma separated values) for importing into a spreadsheet; XML (Extensible Markup Language) for structuring information; RSS and Atom for syndicated content as described in Chapter 4; and RDF (Resource Description Framework) for describing relationships between different data items. When data is represented in standardized formats, it becomes possible to find relationships between items from disparate data sources. CSV is a simple text format for representing tabular data. Each line of a CSV file contains a series of values, usually separated, or delimited, by commas (or sometimes tab characters). The first line of a CSV file often describes the headings for each column of the tabular data. The remaining lines contain the data. Quotation marks group values that consist of more than one word. Figure 6-15(a) shows earthquake data from the US Geological Survey Web site that is represented in CSV format, while Figure 6-15(b) shows the same data imported into Excel for further analysis. Each line of the fle corresponds to one row in a spreadsheet. Figure 6-15(c) shows a mashup created from this data, plotting the earthquake locations on a map based on their latitude and longitude coordinates.

Remote work can be also

roughly divided into employed positions and freelance jobs. Although some might think that is easier for freelancers to start working remotely -as they're their own boss-, it can be harder for them to thrive in a remote based environment, as they lack of a bigger organization support and benefits -like health insurance, which can have a high cost in some countries like the US-, besides a steady salary. "I work more hours, don't get health benefits and pay for my computers, internet, certifications, software and more and I'm highly disciplined to work independently. I don't think most people have any idea what we deal with. I don't need to commute to an office to do my job well. I still experience closed minds from companies who won't hire remote employees. They are ignoring serious talent." Despite this, investment company Betterment estimates that about 33% of remote workers are freelancers, translating to about 1 in 3 of the remote workforce. The figure is expected to rise in the future, reaching 43% of the American workforce in the coming year. "I feel like there is a ton more work, and I have to work like that to cover health insurance and the medical bills they don't pay in the US. I accomplish a ton of work at home - more by far than most people I know working in offices."

DBpedia hosts several

search applications that fnd relationships between Wikipedia articles and linked data sets on the Web. These relationships may make it possible to use Wikipedia in new ways. The results are not generated by matching keywords, as found by doing a text search, but rather rely on using structured information that DBpedia has extracted from Wikipedia's articles. Because DBpedia represents information from Wikipedia in a format based on semantics, the search will fnd relationships between different items. For example, when looking for information about skyscrapers, the total number of foors and the country in which a skyscraper is located are two different characteristics of skyscrapers about which one may search. DBpedia queries its database to fnd entries that match a user's requested features. Figure 6-12 shows how to use DBpedia's Faceted Search to fnd information about skyscrapers located in Hong Kong that are over 50 stories tall. Using DBpedia's Faceted Wikipedia Search to query Wikipedia.

A decade ago, working from home may have

seemed like a distant dream. Today, it's the future of work. With millennials the driving force behind this shift in the workforce, remote work was dismissed as another "annoying" millennial trait. As more companies adopt telecommuting practices, the benefits are very clear. No longer is remote work about working on a beach, it's a complete design in how we approach the way we work. Here are the benefits and reasons why to embrace telecommuting and remote work.

Facebook Connect is a

set of APIs that enable applications to allow users to share their identities and activities across many different Web sites. Your Facebook identity becomes your single sign-on, a common username and password that you can use to access sites, such as those shown in Figure 6-40, that use Facebook Connect. Your activity on those sites may appear in your Facebook status updates. Huffington Post, Digg, and YouTube are examples of three Web sites that support Facebook Connect. When you sign in to a site that supports Facebook Connect, your activities on that site will appear as part of your Facebook Wall or News Feed in your profile. In this way, your friends can learn about your activities on other sites from one central place, your Facebook profile. Figure 6-41 describes the process of using Facebook Connect with YouTube.

OpenID provides a secure way to

share information between Web sites. In Figure 6-44, after entering an OpenID associated with her Flickr account, MapQuest redirects the browser to a sign-in page hosted by Yahoo!, which owns Flickr. There Rhonda enters her Yahoo! username and password for authentication. MapQuest, the consumer of the identity provider's service, never has access to Rhonda's username or password. After she is authenticated, Yahoo! returns information from Rhonda's Yahoo! profile, including her full name, to MapQuest. By using OpenID, users need only remember a single URL to access many different Web sites. Sites that use OpenID may attract users because they do not have to create a special account for each site that they visit. Despite its benefits for users and owners of Web sites, the OpenID is not without risk. Because the same sign-on is shared by many sites, an unauthorized individual who learns a user's OpenID and associated login credentials will be able to access all of the sites to which the user signed on using that OpenID.

Local, state, and national governments are

sharing public data online. Open data Web sites promote transparency in government. Government agencies collect a variety of data as part of their day-to-day operations. Their data sets often include census information, economic growth, land use, and monies spent on governmental services, such as transportation and education. By sharing information online and providing tools for analyzing and visualizing data, the public can better understand trends, priorities, and change in their communities. Proponents of open data believe that the increased availability of government data will increase accountability and make government more effcient.

Software as a Service is a model for delivering

software applications and tools from a Web server to a Web browser or Internet-enabled device at any time. SaaS applications are hosted in the Cloud. The application developer provides the necessary logic and steps for the application to function, as well as instructions for presenting the application within a Web browser, mobile phone, or other device. The SaaS provider stores the user data and manages the security, scalability, and performance of the application. SaaS providers manage their applications from central servers accessed remotely from a Web browser. Software updates can take place frequently and with little interruption to the user. As a result, when a user accesses a Web application, the browser always loads the latest version. The collection of servers, called a server farm, is housed in a computing data center facility, and may host several applications. Many small to medium sized companies find that making use of SaaS solutions is an attractive option because they do not have to purchase or maintain any computer hardware.

Skydrive is an example of

storage in the public Cloud. In the public Cloud, a service provider makes online storage and resources available to the public over the Internet. Dropbox and ZumoDrive both make use of storage in the hybrid Cloud. In the hybrid Cloud, files and resources are stored on a user's computer or an organization's internal network, as well as on a service provider's servers in the Cloud. In contrast, a private Cloud refers to corporate hosting services on an organization's internal or proprietary network. Many Cloud storage providers follow a freemium business model, offering a reasonable but limited amount of Cloud storage for free and charging fees for additional storage space. Table 6-1 summarizes key features of the Cloud storage providers shown in Figure 6-4.

The amount of data that is created and

stored online has increased dramatically in recent years. Not only are people storing more of their own digital information, photos, and videos in the Cloud than ever before, but machines connected to the Internet are providing a wealth of data as sensors record temperatures, surveillance cameras capture images, social networking sites store status updates, and online businesses register customer transactions. All of this data is logged and available for analysis. big data refers to the ability to interact with, manage, and store large data sets. The streams of information from social networking sites, location-based services, and automated sensors continually fow into organizations. Businesses make use of this "fre hose" of information to gain intelligence from customers about their products. Big data challenges companies to maintain a technology infrastructure (storage, bandwidth, and computing power) that can read, write, analyze, search, validate, and constantly process all of this information, as it arrives. Big data also has implications on privacy, as users' locations, search queries, and electronic transactions contributed to an estimated 1.5 zettabytes of information logged in 2010.

Legally, it won't be easy for

the "right-to-disconnect" bill to get passed, and Mayor de Blasio has already expressed that he's not backing it. And some US workers don't think it will gain popular approval either. "I applaud the identification of the issue in support of family and personal life, but short of culture changes in particular industries, I don't see this bill gaining much support especially in New York, where the mom and pop shops need help at irregular hours, and big firms give large compensation for professional work at odd hours," Long Island native David Miller, 30, told Moneyish. Miller works in public health emergency management and would be exempt from the proposed bill since he'd have to be on call for work and admits the "always on" lifestyle has made it difficult for him to unplug when he is off. "Pulling away is important. I love hiking and backpacking and while I have to schedule coverage If I may not have cell service, I think exercising outside is the best way to do it," he says.

Documents and other files stored in

the Cloud are available from any computer with an Internet connection. By storing files in the Cloud, users no longer have to make copies of their files to take with them as they use different computers; instead, the files can all be accessed using a Web browser. Cloud storage provides a centralized location for storing files so that the most recent version will always be available, regardless of the device from which it is accessed. Several Cloud storage providers are shown in Figure 6-4.

Because the presentation is stored in

the Cloud, its most current version always appears in a blog post or on a Web site where it is embedded, even if a user edits the presentation after it has been embedded. When creating a presentation using a desktop application such as Microsoft PowerPoint, the process of posting a presentation to the Web is more complex: a user would first save the presentation as HTML, upload the HTML and associated image files to a Web server, and then type the appropriate HTML in a blog post. Alternatively, a user might publish the presentation on a sharing site such as SlideShare and then include the embed code provided by SlideShare in a blog post. In either case, if a modification is made to the original presentation, a user would have to repeat these steps in order for his or her blog to display the most recent version of the presentation. Another way that Google Docs takes advantage of the fact that it runs in the Cloud is its ability to integrate other Google products. For example, capabilities from Google Translate, Google's online translation application, are implemented within Google Documents so that users may translate documents from one language to another, as shown in Figure 6-30.

Another feature that all of the Google Docs applications offer is

the ability to directly embed or publish the document, spreadsheet, or presentation on the Web. For example, Google Presentations provides a hyperlink to the presentation and HTML code to embed the presentation within a blog or Web site, as shown in Figure 6-29.

The Notable Names Database (NNDB) tracks

the activities of noteworthy individuals and organizations, and links them together through their family relationships, and personal and professional associations. Its Mapper application allows users to start with a topic, represented by a node in the map, and expand nodes in order to discover new relationships. Each node may be expanded to fnd additional items and relationships, or pruned, to limit the size of the resulting map. Figure 6-14 shows a map that started with Mark Zuckerberg. Expanding the node for Mark Zuckerberg showed that he is the founder of Facebook and a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. Expanding the Facebook node shows that Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, is on the Facebook board. Expanding the Alpha Epsilon Pi node shows several notable fgures who were also members of that fraternity. Notable Names Database Mapper application fnds relationships in the NNDB database.

Cloud computing combines

the convenience of Web hosting with the flexibility of Infrastructure, Platform, and Software as a Service so that developers can focus on creating applications rather than maintaining the necessary hardware and software. Cloud computing offers an unlimited amount of computing resources available on an as-needed basis. Providers often use a pay-as-you-go format when charging customers to use those resources. Cloud computing also holds the promise to reduce costs for both application providers and consumers. Companies need not manage their own data centers or hardware to host their applications, saving money on equipment, storage, and bandwidth. Virtual servers provide the infrastructure for managing scalability, performance, and deployment remotely. Both consumers and businesses benefit from the Cloud as a platform for providing applications and sharing data, as the most up-to-date software is available within a browser. Users can access their data and applications from many Internet-connected devices. Web 2.0 companies provide APIs and Web services so that others can access their data to create new applications and mashups that run in the Cloud. These return XML-formatted data to facilitate data exchange between applications. As the Web continues to mature, applications will rely not only on data but also semantics, or the meaning of data to make intelligent decisions on behalf of their users. Web 3.0 will mark the shift from a Web where users participate to one where intelligent agents anticipate the needs and actions of users.

An OpenID often takes

the form of a URL that contains both the domain name of an identity provider and a username. For example, the OpenID http://www.flickr.com/ rhondawebber identifies rhondawebber as a user and Flickr as an identity provider. Your OpenID URL usually links to a profile page on the identity provider's site. MapQuest is an online mapping service. Rather than having to create a new username and password especially for MapQuest, users may sign in with an OpenID. Once logged in, users can save maps of favorite locations in the MyPlaces section of MapQuest so that the maps will be available the next time that they sign in. Figure 6-44 shows the process of logging in to MapQuest using OpenID.

Remote work is changing how

the global workspace operates. In a trend that is showing no signs of slowing down, remote work is rapidly on the increase all around the world. More and more employees are working in remote positions, either full-time or some days of the week, with a large percentage of the workforce looking towards finding job opportunities with flexible schedules. Companies are also embracing this growing desire, increasingly using flexible work options as a way to entice new employees. It is a good idea to take a step back and evaluate how the industry is doing, the changes it brings along, how things have evolved in 2019 and its projections for 2020 and beyond.

Linked data is at

the heart of the Semantic Web. By providing links between related items, people and machines can discover new relationships between data items online. Online books and music, data from government agencies, health care statistics, location and map data, information from Wikipedia, and data from Twitter and other social Web sites are all data that is or can be linked. The Linking Open Data cloud diagram categorizes data providers into seven categories as shown in Table 6-1. The Linking Open Data cloud diagram in Figure 6-11(a) shows data sets from a number of online sources that have been published as part of the Open and Linked Data project. Each category is color coded, as shown in Table 6-1. A close-up view of a portion of the diagram is shown in Figure 6-11(b). At the center of the cloud diagram is DBpedia, an online knowledge base containing information from Wikipedia and other online data sources. The DBpedia knowledge base consists of over a billion pieces of information; 385 million were obtained from the English version of Wikipedia, and the remaining 665 million were extracted from the data sets shown in Figure 6-11(a). The Linking Open Data cloud diagram (a) categorizes datasets from several sources. (b) Zooming in on the cloud diagram offers more detail.

A recently proposed law in New York City has

the potential to change the way residents work—or more accurately, the way they don't. City Councilman Rafael Espinal Jr. introduced a bill that would make it illegal for businesses with at least ten employees to require that their staff check or respond to emails, phone calls, or any other work-related communication after-hours. The law would be the first in the country to enshrine work-life balance into the legal code, and, while it wouldn't bar employers from sending after-hours messages, it would leave the choice to respond up to employees. "Because of technology, it's become very easy for people to be pushed to do their jobs 24 hours a day," Espinal said in an interview with USA Today, "and employees should have the right without fear of retribution to draw a clear line as to whether they want to work during their personal time."

Communication tools like e-mail aren't

the problem, Thomas said. Rather, the problem lies in how people use those tools, she explained. "Our challenge is that the availability of instant communication has created the expectation of instant communication. We must remember that e-mail was designed as asynchronous communication and the pursuit of e-mail as synchronous communication is the new race to the bottom," Thomas said. "Companies that compete on being the fastest will suffer the same fate as those that compete to be the cheapest, as both of these create other problems." Synchronous communication means at least two people exchange information in real time. In most workplaces, communication happens this way and people anticipate quick replies. Asynchronous communication refers to the exchange of information among at least two people without the expectation of immediate responses. How should an organization's communication guidelines be shaped to properly set workers' expectations? Experts offer the following recommendations.

On the back end, Google Documents uses

the same API as Google Translate to perform the translation from one language to another. Consistent with the way that Web 2.0 applications are built with the intention of creating small functional units that can be combined into different applications, Google built one translation service, which both of these applications share.

Each PaaS provider offers developers

the storage, processing, and bandwidth necessary to deploy, manage, and host scalable Internet applications. The Cloud provides additional processing capacity on a remote server. Service agreements between PaaS providers and their customers describe the levels of service that each provider makes available to its customers, including system availability, system performance, storage capabilities, and the ability to recover data.

RDF is a data format that uses

three values, called a triple, to represent a relationship between two data items. As part of the Linked Data project, much of Wikipedia content has been represented as structured data in RDF format. For example, the triple (Albert Einstein, birthPlace, Ulm) and (Germany, country-of, Ulm) represent the relationships that Einstein was born in Ulm, and the country of Ulm is Germany. Such triples are examples of structured data, because information is stored in such a way that allows it to be searched and analyzed by machine. The RelFinder application shown in Figure 6-13 and the NNDB Mapper application as shown in 6-14 are both examples of applications that make use of RDF formatted data. The structure of RDF triples makes it possible to visualize relationships between data items. In Figure 6-17, RelFinder extracts and visualizes relationships from RDF triples to fnd connections between items related to Albert Einstein and Germany. Each rounded rectangle in the graph represents a data item, and each line with a directional arrow connecting two data items describes the relationship between them. By following RDF links, it is possible to discover and relate information found in different data sets. For example, from the relationships in Figure 6-17, it is possible to infer new knowledge, such as the fact "Albert Einstein was born in Germany."

Don't initiate emails or phone calls

to colleagues or clients. While you can certainly provide an "in case of emergency" phone number, initiating work-related communications invites people to contact you. If you really want to switch-off during the holidays, don't send mixed signals to colleagues, clients and bosses.

Cloud storage is especially useful for

users of netbook computers and Internet-enabled cell phones, as these devices have limited internal storage capacities. Cloud storage is also a useful alternative instead of attaching large documents, images, or presentations to e-mail messages. Because files are stored in the Cloud, each file has its own URL. You may share a file's URL in an e-mail message or an instant message, save it as a bookmark on Delicious, or post it online in order to make it available for others to access or download.

Google's Public Data Explorer allows

users to create graphs of elements from open data sets.

Data as a Service providers allow

users to share data and provide tools for analyzing data and creating applications. Google's Public Data Explorer offers tools for interacting with open data available from Google's public data directory. Figure 6-10 shows a graph of Broadband penetration in select European countries, with data provided by Eurostat.

XML is another text format that

uses tags to describe information. XML-formatted data often provides real-time information to other applications. Figure 6-16(a) shows XML data from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) that shows the current locations of busses in service. MyTTC, shown in Figure 6-16(b), relies on this real-time location data as part of a trip-planning Web and mobile application created independently of the TTC by a local citizen.

Furthermore, a survey of workers by

workplace software company Front found that two-thirds were stressed-out by the ever-growing flurry of work-related messages. "Granting employees the right to ignore distractions and focus on work reverses the workplace standard that distracting colleagues is acceptable," the Forrester report states. But is it possible to shut the door, even temporarily, on electronic communication in the workplace? If so, how does an employer ensure that critical messages are being seen and answered in a timely manner? In short, productivity and communication professionals say it's possible—and even desirable—to permit employees to put off responding to electronic messages in favor of concentrating on higher-value duties. However, they add, an entire organization must have the same communication expectations. Concrete guidelines about communication can prevent an employee who "ignores" e-mails, instant messages or Slack messages from aggravating the colleagues who sent those messages and are awaiting responses.

Virtual meetings don't have to be seen as a

waste of time. In fact, they can be more valuable than traditional face-to-face meetings. Beyond the fact that they're inexpensive ways to get people together - think: no travel costs and readily available technology - they're also great opportunities to build engagement, trust and candor among teams. Several years ago, my company's Research Institute embarked on an exploration of the "New People Rules in a Virtual World" to explore how technology is shaping our relationships and how we collaborate. This multiyear journey also evolved my thinking on the subject, helping me recognize that virtual is not the enemy of the physical if key rules and processes are maintained and respected. Going back through that research now, I've put together a comprehensive list of some simple do's and don'ts to help you get the most out of your next virtual meeting.

Plan time in your schedule to "catch up"

when you are back on-the-clock so that you don't have to worry about work while you're away. So give yourself plenty of time after taking a break to get back into work-mode. That's it! A combination of advance planning and some simple technology tools can help you achieve a better work-life balance during the holidays, and that's sure to make you happier and more productive — whether you are at work or at play.

Wordle also can create a

word cloud using blog posts, content from Web feeds, or Delicious tags. If you specify a Delicious user name, Wordle will create a word cloud based on that user's tags. Wordle uses the Delicious API to access a user's Delicious tags with which to create the word cloud. The word cloud has become a way to visually represent content, because terms or tags used more frequently appear in larger font sizes. Schmap, shown in Figure 6-49, is a travel mashup that combines photos from Flickr users with user-generated content for attractions and destinations around the world, as well as Google maps that display the locations of those photos.

Technology has made it easy for us to

work from anywhere — even the in-laws house during the holidays. And while work may be a great excuse to avoid any undesirable topics of conversation around the coffee table, we don't want to be tied to our devices during the holiday. The line between work and play is being blurred by 24/7 emails, instant messages and mobile phone calls. Whether its dealing with a demanding boss or our own FOMO, unplugging at this time of year requires a strategy. A recent survey from the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) confirms what most of us already know: people are staying increasingly connected to work — even when they are out-of-office (OOO). According to the ILM survey, 65 percent of respondents admitted to checking work emails while on vacation, and 75 percent said they have taken or made a work call while on leave. To reduce stress and add balance to your life, here are five strategies for better managing your communication tools so that they don't manage you during the holidays:

A 2017 study reported by the New York Times found that

workers spend an extra eight hours a week firing off work emails after work. And research shows that staying connected after hours is harmful to the health. A survey from Virginia Tech found that when workers feel their employer expects them to monitor work email after hours, they feel anxious and it adversely disrupts people's personal lives. What's more, other studies have shown that when people bring their work home, it can lead to a strained family environment. Some companies have already implemented voluntary policies to help employees disconnect after work. Volkswagen stopped forwarding emails to company phones between 6 and 7 p.m. And in 2013, Germany's employment ministry banned its employers from calling or emailing staffers after house with the exception of emergency.

Intelligent agents monitor

your preferences in order to perform transactions on your behalf.

Telecommuting

—also known as working from home (WFH), working remotely, or e-commuting—is a work arrangement in which the employee works outside the office. Often this means working from home or at a location close to home, such as coffee shops, libraries, or co-working spaces.

For Virtual Meetings, Tech Etiquette Matters

• Prepare as carefully for online meetings as you would for in-person meetings—the informal veneer of videoconferencing can be deceiving, but business exchanges must be handled with equal professionalism in both real and virtual life. • Manners matter. Be cognizant and respectful of dialogue, tone, posture, eye contact, cultural norms, and other real-life concerns while virtually conversing. • Test equipment ahead of going live. Equipment malfunctions may still happen, but they will be minimized if you do some testing ahead of the big meeting. Should technical malfunctions occur, greet them with poise and aplomb—others are watching. Maintaining grace under pressure is important, as is having a backup plan. • Clean up the background that will be visible on camera. Be aware of any sensitive personal information that may unintentionally be revealed by objects that are visible in the frame, and make sure your surroundings are neat and professional.

For Virtual Meetings, Tech Etiquette Matters (2)

• Speak clearly and distinctly. Try not to mumble. Note that computer microphones and speakers may distort your voice: It may be necessary to talk more loudly and enunciate more clearly than normal—however, it's best to ask the other party how signals are coming through before doing so. • Lag, or signal delays, may also impact conversations. Be sure to factor timing into exchanges so as not to talk over one another, miss important information, or cause unintentional gaffes. • When attending online team meetings, assign specific team members to specific tasks—e.g., recording notes, updating master project documents, or jotting down action items—to minimize confusion and ensure that all team members are in sync. • Formalize and adopt videoconferencing-specific policies so that employees know what to expect from sessions and how to comport themselves. • When conducting virtual gatherings, keep your surroundings as similar as possible to those you'd encounter during real-world meetings. According to studies, doing so will help place professional participants at greater ease.